Thanks, Judy.
I have wrestled with this question of "control" that you
describe. I do hope to get enough participants to deal
with the variability you describe. I'm also doing a parallel
experiment (that I did not mention in my email to the list)
that will be a "quick lesson" on a similar issue, with a well-
defined control group and my ILE group. In the perfect (!)
experimental world, the outcomes would be the same in
the two experiments. In the realistic world, I'm hoping for
some signs of similarity.
Again, thanks for the heads-up on this issue.
Take care,
Dave
Hi David --
Just a thought... You might want to chat with your stats
colleagues on
this one. If I'm understanding correctly, you're looking for a
control
group against which to measure your new teaching
approach. Right?
If so, it strikes me that the 2 groups (control &
experimental) ought to
be reasonably comparable and that the teaching
approach being used with
your control group ought to be reasonably consistent.
Do you think you can get a n's large enough to let the
"random sample"
feature take care of demographic comparability?
And how will you deal with the fact that there will be
many, many
different teaching styles across your volunteer control
group faculty?
Or that the curriculum (topic coverage & level of rigor)
may vary
substantially from instructor to instructor and college to
college?
Your project sounds like a really neat one! Please let me
know how
you'll cope with the logistical complications. If you have a
nifty way
to make your study statistically sound it would be a great
service to
share that with others. I'm willing to bet lots of us have
things we'd
like to "test" using a similar approach.
Cheers! Judy R-M
Judy Roobian-Mohr, Ph.D.
Professor
Social & Behavioral Sciences Department
Columbus State Community College
550 E. Spring St.
Columbus OH 43215
PHONE: 614-287-2661
FAX: 614-287-5301
jroobian@cscc.edu
>>> "David Wheat" <dwheat@wheatresources.com> 07/
12/04 2:42 PM >>>
Greetings to everyone on this list.
I teach macro at a community college in Virginia, and I am
currently getting a PhD in Norway. I have developed a
system dynamics (SD) model of the economy and an
interactive learning environment (ILE) for macro. In my
teaching, I put a heavy emphasis on dynamic feedback
effects rather than comparative statics.
I can provide more info to those who are interested, but
the main reason I'm sending this message is to get out
the word that I will be conducting an experiment this fall to
test the learning effects of the ILE. And, I am looking for
macro instructors who would like to participate.
The experiment requires a pre-test at the beginning of the
course, and a post-test at the end. All you would have to
do is arrange for the administration of the tests. You
would not need to change your teaching methods. What
I hope to learn is whether students who participate in my
course, using the ILE and SD model, demonstrate a better
grasp of feedback effects over time, compared to students
who do not use these teaching aids. The pre-test
questions are not finalized yet, but will involve a "policy
situation" that calls for applying what has been learned in
the course. The pre-test results will be poor, but are
needed to establish a baseline for comparison.
All participants (instructors, students, and institutions) will
remain anonymous in the article that will be written about
this experiment. And the data will be made available to
all participants.
Thanks for providing this forum for discussing economics
teaching.
All the best,
Dave
-- David Wheat University of Bergen, Norway 47-55-58-4142 (office) 47-55-27-6836 (home) dwheat@wheatresources.com ---- David Wheat University of Bergen, Norway 47-55-58-4142 (office) 47-55-27-6836 (home) dwheat@wheatresources.com --
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