Active Role in Class Helps Black and First-Generation College Students, Study Says - NYTimes.com: The trend away from classes based on reading and listening passively to lectures, and toward a more active role for students, has its most profound effects on black students and those whose parents did not go to college, a new study of college students shows.
Active learning raised average test scores more than 3 percentage points, and significantly reduced the number of students who failed the exams, the study found. The score increase was doubled, to more than 6 percentage points, for black students and first-generation college students.
For black students, that gain cut in half their score gap with white students. It eliminated the gap between first-generation students and other students.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite CollegesAUG. 25, 2014
Who Gets to Graduate?MAY 15, 2014
Colorblind Notion Aside, Colleges Grapple With Racial TensionFEB. 24, 2014
The study does not explain the disparate benefits, and “a lot more work needs to go into looking at attitudes and behaviors,” said Kelly A. Hogan, one of the study’s authors. She is the director of instructional innovation for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
