By Michael Feldstein. A while back, I wrote about my early experiences as a member of the Digital Working Group for the AAC&U General Education Maps and Markers (GEMs) initiative and promised that I would do my homework for the group in public. Today I will make good on that promise. The homework is to write-up an exemplar practice of how digital tools and practices can help support students in their journeys through GenEd. More...

By Michael Feldstein. Some days, the internet gods are kind.
On April 9th, I wrote,

We want talking about educational efficacy to be like talking about the efficacy of Advil for treating arthritis. But it’s closer to talking about the efficacy of various chemotherapy drugs for treating a particular cancer. And we’re really really bad at talking about that kind of efficacy. I think we have our work cut out for us if we really want to be able to talk intelligently and intelligibly about the effectiveness of any particular educational intervention.

On the very same day, the estimable Larry Cuban blogged. More...

By Michael Feldstein. In my last post, I described positive but mixed results of an effort by MSU’s psychology department to flip and blend their classroom:

• On the 30-item comprehensive exam, students in the redesigned sections performed significantly better (84% improvement) compared to the traditional comparison group (54% improvement).
• Students in the redesigned course demonstrated significantly more improvement from pre to post on the 50-item comprehensive exam (62% improvement) compared to the traditional sections (37% improvement).
• Attendance improved substantially in the redesigned section. (Fall 2011 traditional mean percent attendance = 75% versus fall 2012 redesign mean percent attendance = 83%)
• They did not get a statistically significant improvement in the number of failures and withdrawals, which was one of the main goals of the redesign, although they note that “it does appear that the distribution of A’s, B’s, and C’s shifted such that in the redesign, there were more A’s and B’s and fewer C’s compared to the traditional course.”
• In terms of cost reduction, while they fell short of their 17.8% goal, they did achieve a 10% drop in the cost of the course….

It’s also worth noting that MSU expected to increase enrollment by 72 students annually but actually saw a decline of enrollment by 126 students, which impacted their ability to deliver decreased costs to the institution.

Those numbers were based on the NCAT report that was written up after the first semester of the redesigned course. More...