No comparison: Distance education finds a new use for ‘No significant difference’

Media comparison studies have long been criticized as an inappropriate research design for measuring the effectiveness of instructional technology. However, a resurgence in their use has recently been noted in distance education for program evaluation purposes. An analysis of the research design will detail why such a methodology is an inappropriate approach to such an investigation. Increased access to such programming does not seem to serve as a satisfactory benefit for the implementation of distance education efforts. Stakeholders desire to prove that participants in distance-delivered courses receive the same quality of instruction off-campus as those involved in the traditional classroom setting. However, the desire to prove that the quality of such distributed offerings is equal to the quality of on-campus programming often results in comparisons of achievement between the two groups of student participants. Statistically, such a research design almost guarantees that the desired outcome will be attained—that indeed distance learners perform as well as campus-based students.     

Applying computerized-scoring models of written biological explanations across courses and colleges: prospects and limitations

Our study explored the prospects and limitations of using machine-learning software to score introductory biology students’ written explanations of evolutionary change. We investigated three research questions: 1) Do scoring models built using student responses at one university function effectively at another university? 2) How many human-scored student responses are needed to build scoring models suitable for cross-institutional application? 3) What factors limit computer-scoring efficacy, and how can these factors be mitigated? To answer these questions, two biology experts scored a corpus of 2556 short-answer explanations (from biology majors and nonmajors) at two universities for the presence or absence of five key concepts of evolution. Human- and computer-generated scores were compared using kappa agreement statistics. We found that machine-learning software was capable in most cases of accurately evaluating the degree of scientific sophistication in undergraduate majors’ and nonmajors’ written explanations of evolutionary change. In cases in which the software did not perform at the benchmark of “near-perfect” agreement (kappa > 0.80), we located the causes of poor performance and identified a series of strategies for their mitigation. Machine-learning software holds promise as an assessment tool for use in undergraduate biology education, but like most assessment tools, it is also characterized by limitations.     

Medical students' attitudes toward the anatomy dissection room in relation to personality

Assessment of the personalities of medical students could enable medical educators to formulate strategies for the best development of academic and clinical competencies. In this article, we focus on the experience of students in the anatomy dissecting room. While there have been many attempts to evaluate the emotional responses of medical students to human cadaveric dissection, there has been no investigation into how different personality traits affect the responses. The main hypothesis tested was that there is a relationship between personality traits and attitudes toward the dissection room. For the present study, a group of French medical students (n = 403; mean age 21.3 ± 1.6; 65.3% female) completed a Big Five personality inventory and a questionnaire to assess their attitudes in regard to human dissection. The findings are consistent with our hypothesis, in that we found a relationship between reporting anxiety and four of the Big Five dimensions (all except openness). The rated level of anxiety was positively correlated with negative affectivity, more strongly at the beginning than at the end of the course. There were significant gender differences in attitudes toward dissection. The findings are discussed in relation to the possibility of preparing students for the dissecting room experience and also in relation to the students' understanding of mortality issues.