Journal
CBE-LIFE SCIENCES EDUCATION
Volume 13, Issue 3, Pages 453-468Publisher
AMER SOC CELL BIOLOGY
DOI: 10.1187/cbe.14-03-0050
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Funding
- NSF [DUE 1118890, DUE 0942215]
- Large Course Redesign Grant/Lenovo Instructional Innovation Grant from the Center for Faculty Excellence at University of North Carolina (UNC)
- Center for Faculty Excellence at UNC
- Division Of Undergraduate Education
- Direct For Education and Human Resources [1118890] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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At the college level, the effectiveness of active-learning interventions is typically measured at the broadest scales: the achievement or retention of all students in a course. Coarse-grained measures like these cannot inform instructors about an intervention's relative effectiveness for the different student populations in their classrooms or about the proximate factors responsible for the observed changes in student achievement. In this study, we disaggregate student data by racial/ethnic groups and first-generation status to identify whether a particular intervention-increased course structure-works better for particular populations of students. We also explore possible factors that may mediate the observed changes in student achievement. We found that a moderate-structure intervention increased course performance for all student populations, but worked disproportionately well for black students-halving the black-white achievement gap-and first-generation students-closing the achievement gap with continuing-generation students. We also found that students consistently reported completing the assigned readings more frequently, spending more time studying for class, and feeling an increased sense of community in the moderate-structure course. These changes imply that increased course structure improves student achievement at least partially through increasing student use of distributed learning and creating a more interdependent classroom community.
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