WPI Center for Educational Development & Assessment (CEDA) -

More Student Learning, Less Faculty Work? The WPI Davis Experiment in Educational Quality and Productivity

I. INTRODUCTION AND PROBLEM STATEMENT

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has a long history of educational innovation, the most recent era beginning with the inception of the outcomes-based WPI Plan in the early 1970's. In a revolutionary departure from the traditional undergraduate curriculum, the Plan replaced required lists of credits to be accumulated with a requirement that students develop and demonstrate their competency for real world challenges by carrying out independent projects in their junior and senior years. But by the early 1990's it was becoming increasingly obvious that the traditional lecture-based mode of classroom teaching, the common course format at WPI as well as other institutions, did little or nothing to prepare students for the projects they would encounter later in their careers, both at WPI and in the professional world.

Fortuitously, in 1992, the Davis Educational Foundation challenged WPI to address the seemingly endless spiral of increasing costs and declining quality in higher education by inviting WPI to submit a proposal to increase both educational quality and faculty productivity. The model that WPI proposed, and which the Davis Foundation funded , addressed the educational quality issue with mini-grants to faculty to restructure their large introductory courses from a traditional to a cooperative learning (CL) format, a change which has been shown in literally hundreds of studies to improve educational outcomes (Johnson and Johnson, 1989; Johnson et al., 1991), but which could be expected to increase, not decrease, demands on faculty time. The novel feature of the WPI proposal was the invention of Peer Learning Assistants (PLAs), undergraduate students who were hired to facilitate group process and group dynamics in the CL groups, thus freeing faculty to manage the CL environment rather than the details of the process. The new model, which we have dubbed Peer-Assisted Cooperative Learning (PAC), was particularly appropriate to WPI because it held promise for bringing the mode of classroom instruction into closer alignment with graduation requirements based on project work.

Since the inception of the first PAC course initiative (Miller's BB1010/1020) in the spring of 1993, 11 courses in 7 disciplines (Biology & Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Humanities, Mathematics, and Mechanical Engineering) have been converted to the PAC model. In addition, another 5 course initiatives in 4 disciplines (one discipline of which is new to the Davis project), experimenting with the use of technology to increase faculty productivity and in many cases utilizing PLAs as well, are currently underway. As each course initiative was completed, the faculty investigator wrote a final report on that initiative. As the Davis project neared its end, we collected and analyzed data on a campus-wide scale so as to assess the overall effects of the approach on educational quality and productivity. Educational quality is easily understood by educators; but the definition of educational productivity is somewhat more elusive. In some works on educational productivity (cited in Groccia and Miller, 1998), productivity has been defined as the monetary value of outputs (i.e. quality measures) divided by the monetary value of inputs. Inputs to the educational process, consisting mainly of faculty and staff time, are easily measurable in monetary terms. Educational outputs include some monetary outputs, i.e. the potential earnings value of a college education. Although it is not possible to place a monetary value on a grade of A as opposed to a B, for example, or on the good will of a graduating student, we have chosen to take a broader view which considers non-monetary educational outcomes as outputs. Some such outcomes, easily measurable, are student grades, retention, and satisfaction; less easily measurable ones include critical thinking skills, teamwork, and written and oral communication skills.

This document constitutes a final report of the development, implementation, and assessment of the WPI Davis Project. Overall, we have found peer-assisted cooperative learning as implemented at WPI to be effective in improving student grades in later courses, and in improving student retention and graduation rates. It does not have consistent measurable effects on attitudes of participating students. PLAs report that their PAC experience has been very beneficial and rewarding. In the steady state, the model can be implemented with a small savings of faculty time, nevertheless accompanied by a slight increase in cost due to the cost of PLA salaries.

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Last modified: Jun 21, 2005, 15:57 EDT