Incentives and Student Learning: A Natural Experiment with Economics Problem Sets

Grove, Wayne A.; Wasserman, Tim

doi:10.1257/000282806777212224

Cited by 55 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The treated group outperformed control group students by 4% on average-but only in tests that are directly covered by the assessed homework (Emerson and Menken, 2011)-and not the 'Test of understanding in college economics' (Walstad et al, 2007). Similarly, Grove and Wasserman (2006) relied on a natural experiment, leading to differences in assessment weighting for homework (15% towards the final grade) within a cohort and reported a final grade improvement of 2 percentage points. Overall, the literature has provided evidence that in the short run both compulsion and assessment weighting can be effective at increasing grades.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Making it Count’: Incentives, Student Effort and Performance

Chevalier

Dolton

Lührmann

2017

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society

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This paper examines how incentives to participate in online assessments (quizzes) affect students' effort and performance. Our identification strategy exploits within-student weekly variation in incentives to attempt online quizzes. We find tournament incentives and participation incentives to be ineffective in increasing quiz participation. In contrast, making the quiz counts towards the final grade substantially increases participation. We find no evidence of displacement of effort between weeks. Using a natural experiment which provides variation in assessment weighting of the quizzes between two cohorts, we find that affected students obtain better exam grades. We estimate the return to 10% assessment weighting to be around 0.27 of a standard deviation in the in-term exam grade. We find no evidence that assessment weighting has unintended consequences, i.e., that increased quiz effort: displaces effort over the year; reduces other forms of effort; or reduces (effort and thus) performance in other courses. Finally, assessment weighting induced effort increases most for students at and below median ability, resulting in a reduction of the grade gap by 17%. JEL Code: I23, D20Keywords: Incentive, Effort displacement, Effort, Higher Education Acknowledgement: We wish to acknowledge the help of the administrative staff at RHUL and thank Eleftherios Giovanis for research assistance. We are grateful to Macke Raymond, Edwin Leuven, Hessel Oosterbeek, Susan Dynarski, John Bound, Santiago Oliveros and seminar participants at CESifo, RES, Sussex, Michigan, City University, Nuremberg, SOFI Stockholm, NIESR, SFI and IZA for comments. The editor and anonymous referees also provided numerous valuable comments that improved this manuscript. This project was partially financed by the RHUL Faculty Initiative Fund.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Making it Count’: Incentives, Student Effort and Performance

Chevalier

Dolton

Lührmann

2017

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society

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“…Historically, conventional wisdom has suggested that providing incentives, such as grades and the ability to rework homework problems, will lead to more time spent on homework, higher homework grades, and better exam performance-see Keith (1982), Emerson and Mencken (2011) and Grove and Wasserman (2006), respectively. With the advent of online management systems the nature of homework assignments has fundamentally changed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Homework Management Systems: Should we Allow Multiple Attempts?

Sarbaum¹

2015

The American Economist

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Homework is increasingly being auto-administered online with systems that offer numerous assignment settings. This paper discusses the results of a quasi-experiment designed to evaluate student behavior under single and multiple attempt homework settings using an online homework management system. We explore whether or not multiple attempts lead to more effort and improved performance, and evaluate alternative, less desirable, behaviors that are potentially incentivized. We find that multiple attempts lead to "guessing" behavior and in turn grade inflation, hence improving scores without improving learning outcomes.

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“…A similar methodology was used by Ball, Eckel, and Rojas (2006), Grove and Wasserman (2006), and Fried (2008) to determine the impact of the various factors that may influence a student's grade. In addition to the class environment, factors likely to affect scores are student's ability or academic aptitude, student effort, and other demographics such as race, gender, major, and years of school experience.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Business Statistics in a Computer Lab: Benefit or Distraction?

Martin

2011

Journal of Education for Business

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Teaching in a classroom configured with computers has been heralded as an aid to learning. Students receive the benefits of working with large data sets and real-world problems. However, with the advent of network and wireless connections, students can now use the computer for alternating tasks, such as emailing, web browsing, and social networking. Do these distractions diminish the benefits of the computers? An experiment was conducting comparing exam scores in two different classes, one class held in a traditional classroom and another class taught in a computer lab classroom. Holding constant other factors such as student's ability and demographics, the results show a small negative effect from conducting class in a computer equipped classroom.

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Incentives and Student Learning: A Natural Experiment with Economics Problem Sets

Cited by 55 publications

References 3 publications

‘Making it Count’: Incentives, Student Effort and Performance

‘Making it Count’: Incentives, Student Effort and Performance

Online Homework Management Systems: Should we Allow Multiple Attempts?

Teaching Business Statistics in a Computer Lab: Benefit or Distraction?

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