Compare Groups of Students Within a Single Course

Approach

• select different teaching strategies
• divide the course into groups
• use different teaching strategies on each group
• compare outcomes for the different groups

Implementation Issues

• how are the groups selected?
• how are we sure people in one group are not exposed to the method used in the other group?

Problems

• if the groups are self-selected, differences in outcomes may be due to the reason students selected a particular group
• is it "fair" to grade students on the same scale when different teaching methods were used

Advantages

• all students come from the same class
• can compare student performance on common exam questions
• quick results