Cold calling and web postings: Do they improve students’ preparation and learning in statistics?

Getting students to prepare well for class is a common challenge faced by instructors all over the world. This study investigates the effects that two frequently used techniques to increase student preparation -- web postings and cold calling -- have on student outcomes. The study is based on two experiments and a qualitative study conducted in a statistics course that Masters in Public Policy (MPP) students take in their second semester at the Harvard Kennedy School. When used together, web postings and cold calling seem to increase the amount of time that students devote to reading before class by about an hour. This effect is both statistically and practically significant. However this increase in pre-class reading did not translate into increased learning (measured by average test scores on the midterm exam). Neither of the two techniques seems to be better than the other one at increasing reading time, test scores, and other student outcomes.

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Cold Calling and Web Postings: Do They Improve Students’ Preparation and Learning?

Cold calling and pre-class web postings are frequently used to encourage students to read and come better prepared to class. Randomized experiments were conducted in two sections of an Empirical Methods course (API- 202) to assess to what extent these techniques increased student preparation and learning. Main conclusion is that in the context of this course, these two techniques led to increases in the amount of time that students spend reading before class, but not to learning gains. The study led the instructor to reflect on several aspects of his teaching practice, including the use of these two techniques for his courses, the interaction between the reading material before class and the material used during class, and the crowding out of student time from one course-related activity to another