HR: 0800h
AN: ED31A-0079    [Abstracts]
TI: Just-in-Time-Teaching (JiTT) Improves Students' Performance in Classes - My adaptation of JiTT in 4 Geography Courses
AU: * Luo, W
EM: wluo@niu.edu
AF: Northern Illinois University, Department of Geography Davis Hall 120, DeKalb, IL 60115, United States
AB: By constructing "treatment" and "control" groups from existing grade rolls of courses taught with Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) method and traditional lecturing in recent years, this study demonstrates that JiTT improves student performance in class. First, two groups of students were selected from each of the 4 different courses taught with JiTT such that the "treatment" group regularly completed warm-up exercises and "control" group did not, but both groups had similar 1st exam scores. Statistical t-tests show that the "treatment" group had significantly higher overall course grade (by one letter grade on average) than the "control" group. Second, statistical t-test also indicates that students' relative improvement between the last and the first exams in a general education course using JiTT method is significantly higher than that of the same course using traditional lecturing prior to using JiTT. In addition, qualitative surveys of students demonstrate that the majority of the students thought that doing Warm-Up exercises helped their learning, because Warm-Ups got them thinking about the material before going into lecture and thus made them more aware of and keen to the topics that would be discussed. These consistent results in different courses suggest that JiTT does help improve students' performance.
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0825 Teaching methods
DE: 0840 Evaluation and assessment
DE: 0850 Geoscience education research
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting