Sunday, November 9, 2008

Should We Measure Change? Yes!

Some blog followers (blogees?) may be interested in:

Hake, R.R. 2008. "Should We Measure Change? Yes!" online at 
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/MeasChangeS.pdf   (2.5 MB) or as reference 43 at 
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake .   To appear as a chapter in Evaluation of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education [Hake, in preparation].

ABSTRACT: Formative pre/post testing is being successfully employed to improve the effectiveness of courses in undergraduate astronomy, biology, chemistry, economics, engineering, geoscience, mathematics, and physics.  But such testing is still anathema to many members of the psychology-education-psychometric (PEP) community. I argue that this irrational bias impedes a much needed enhancement of student learning in higher education. I then review the development of diagnostic multiple-choice tests of higher-level learning; normalized gain and ceiling effects; the documented two-sigma superiority of "interactive engagement" over traditional passive-student pedagogy in the conceptually difficult subject of Newtonian mechanics; the probable neuronal basis for such superiority; education's lack of a "community map"; higher education's resistance to change and its related failure to improve the public schools; and, finally, why we should be concerned with student learning.

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