Article Reviews
by Paul Ching
The Myth and Power of the Front Row Smarty
Review of The Surprising Impact Of Seat Location On Student Performance by Katherine K. Perkins and Carl E. Wieman (2008), published in The Physics Teacher, 43, 30-33.
Many instructors believe that stronger students tend to sit in the front of the classroom, weaker students sit towards the back, and they assume that those seating choices simply reflect stronger and weaker students' preferences. However, what if the seat location itself contributed to stronger and weaker student performance? In their study of an introductory physics class for non-science majors, Perkins and Wieman come to the surprising conclusion that when students were randomly assigned seats, their seat locations appeared to have positive and adverse effects on student performance.
Perkins and Wieman conducted their study on 201 students who were from a diverse background of majors and ages; 43% were first year, first-term students. The lectures for this physics class were highly interactive, with extensive use of peer instruction techniques and a personal response system ("clickers"). At the start of the course, students received random seat assignments; at the midterm, their seat locations were reversed so students sitting in the front were shifted to the back of the lecture hall and students in the back were placed in the front. The lecture hall had sloped seating and was equipped with a system that could both project PowerPoint slides as well as magnify in-class demonstrations that took place at the front of the room. Reading quizzes, class participation, homework, and exams determined students' grades.
Perkins and Wieman discovered that students who had been initially sitting at the front had a disproportionate percentage of A's (27%) when compared to those students who had been switched from the back of the room to the front (18%). The patterns for F's likewise mirrored students' initial seat locations: those students who had been switched from front to back had a lower percentage of F's (2%) compared to those who had been switched from back to front (12%). Attendance and confidence levels about physics knowledge also reflected the initial seating arrangements: those who had been initially sitting in the front missed fewer classes and expressed more confidence about their knowledge of physics than those who had been initially seated in the back.
Considering that students had random seat assignments, thereby mixing stronger with weaker students, Perkins and Wieman's findings are striking, especially considering that all class sessions contained active learning strategies that were meant to engage everyone, particularly those seated in the back of the lecture hall. While silent about possible reasons for this disparity in student performance, Perkins and Wieman's study certainly raises interesting questions and calls for further research.
Do Cheat Sheets Reduce Testing Anxiety?
Review of Authorized Crib Cards Do Not Improve Exam Performance by Laurie K. Dickson and Michelle D. Miller (2005), published in Teaching of Psychology, 32(4), 230-233.
While most exams are not "open book," instructors sometimes allow students to use "Crib Cards" - notes limited to a single note card or sheet of paper. Such cards are assumed to alleviate test-taking anxiety and allow students to focus less on rote memorization, and more on answering more conceptually-oriented questions that assess higher order cognitive skills.
Drawing on a sample size of 54 undergraduate students in two sections of an upper division psychology class, Dickson and Miller administered four multiple choice exams that contained both lower and higher order cognitive skills. On the first day of class, students filled out questionnaires that assessed initial perceptions of crib cards: how likely crib cards would be used; how likely they would improve grades on exams; how they would affect anxiety levels during exams; and, the degree to which they had been used in other classes. On the last day of class, students completed questionnaires that recorded crib card use during the term.
While the results of Dickson and Miller's study were consistent with previous research -crib card use did not lead to higher exam scores - their study did provide insight into the assumptions that crib cards alleviated test-taking anxiety and enabled students to focus on higher order cognitive skills. Dickson and Miller learned that while nearly 80% of students had initially predicted using a crib card would decrease anxiety, only 40.5% said that it actually did. In addition, students' inability to do well on questions that assessed both higher and lower order cognitive skills - despite crib card use - suggest that the cards did not support the assumption that they improve students' ability to focus on the conceptually oriented questions.
The authors offer a few possible reasons for these results. First, crib cards likely contained information that students already knew and therefore did not help to enhance their performance on exams. Second, constructing the crib cards might have consumed valuable time that could have been spent studying for the exams, especially if total study time did not increase and study habits did not change.
Dickson and Miller conclude by suggesting additional areas of research, especially into providing students with advice about effective crib card construction and use, as well as analyzing crib card content to understand the process of how students study and use them.
Paul Ching is a teaching consultant and part of the Preparing Future Faculty staff at the Center for Teaching and Learning.
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