Often college deans do not allow professors to teach cooperatively in traditional colleges because of the expense (two professors per one class of students). Further, there are often problems with negotiating syllabus, grading, and teaching duties between the professors. Executed properly, students and faculty greatly benefit from the experience; done poorly, it is a great waste of faculty resource. A solution to this flaw in the standard cooperative teaching model is to, instead, link the courses.
The linked course model reduces the cost while increasing student involvement and learning. Using a quasi-experimental model, researchers explored whether students who participated in a linked model for Adolescent Development and Young Adult Literature would show greater academic performance, respond more in class, participate more (attendance), and report greater satisfaction with learning than students who studied in separate sections of the courses.
In three terms of this experiment, over 250 students participated in the study. As students registered for courses, they were notified of the choice to either take the linked courses or to take the classes separately (or to not take both of them during the term). Students were not told about the experiment during registration, though the registrar did carefully inform students who mistakenly signed up for one of the linked courses and not the other to change sections.
There were control groups for both classes so that the same professors taught one section of a linked course and one that was not. Data from each session was compared to the control class for that term. Results were weighted during analysis because there were two courses (control) compared to one experimental.
Specific data was gathered to respond to these questions:
1. Does participation in a linked course model increase class participation (measured by frequency of discussion board posting and seminar response)?
2. Does participation in a linked course model increase the quality of class participation (measured as response type: question, cross response- information from one class used in the other, response to classmate, response to professor, and not relevant)?
3. Are there statistically significant differences in final grades, attendance, and satisfaction with learning between the groups?
This was a double-blind study in that the professors never knew which students were participants in the study. When students entered class on the first day, they met with a research assistant who explained the study and asked students to participate. Those who agreed to participate completed a survey that measured knowledge of subject matter, attitude towards learning in general, attitude towards participating in a linked course experience, and knowledge of cooperative learning. Participants completed the same survey again one week after class finished. This was for all participants regardless of class type.
Then, the professors entered the room without ever knowing who participated (if any). This experiment was conducted at a major university where students were required to attend the first class in person (all other classes were delivered online). The same occurred in the classes that were taught separately from the linked model. All students were also asked permission to videotape their participation in class. The research assistants videotaped the classes and were the only ones who knew which students allowed themselves to be taped. Research assistants then coded each day's tapes to determine how many responses were elicited. They recorded these responses in categories by response type.
In the linked courses, one professor taught the usual information for Adolescent Development and the other taught Young Adult Literature. Professors did not plan courses together, did not discuss student performance, and did not openly encourage students to "cross-respond" (use theory from one class to respond to a question in the other). The goal of the study was to specifically measure the quantity and quality in responses elicited by students in all sections. These cross-responses were of particular interest as they demonstrated a deeper understanding of the subject material.
Interesting patterns of response emerged in participants in the linked courses. There was a steady rise in complexity, time, and cross-responses (using information from one class to answer a question in the other class). Professors were carefully coached to not make any connections between course information for students. In the control sections of the classes, students did occasionally refer to information from other psychology or literature classes, but mostly only used theory from the specific course.
Further, analysis of all data showed some startling results. Participants in the linked courses earned .5 final higher grades overall, participated 40% more often than those in the control, retention for the linked courses was 95% compared to 86% for the controls, and student satisfaction for the learning experience was significantly higher than those in the controls.
While these results have been consistent over three college terms, there are limitations to this model. The professors have to agree to not prompt students to give certain types of feedback in class. There were times when the professors ignored this study constraint and enthusiastically steered student discussion. Further, students had to self-select into the linked course because of scheduling. So, there may have been a certain type of student who was already in making connections between the two classes. However, these limitations seem fairly difficult to control given the difficulties with scheduling classes of students who can all take the same two classes at the same time.
The hope is that educators can benefit from linking any two classes to create interesting connections between theories. For example, matching courses that might not have obvious similarities challenge students to create those bridges (e.g. computer programming and social psychology). According to both the quantitative and qualitative data, students in the linked courses reported great satisfaction with their experience. Most notable, students commented on the exit survey that they felt that they would continue to use information from one class in another to increase learning.
The poster will explain the study, show results (quantitative and qualitative), and a computer will show snippets of the actual classes to demonstrate response types.
