Other questions
Are these methods transferable to other courses?
Do they take more instructor time? Does student learning increase?
Do student attitudes improve?
Can you cover as much material?
Change in attendance and student interactions ?
Notes:
Are these methods transferable to other courses? yes
Do they take more instructor time? Yes -- for the first time. But, any new course takes more time.
Does student learning increase? Perhaps.
Do student attitudes improve? Not according to these data.
Can you cover as much material? No. Spending more time on a limited number of topics means fewer topics.
Change in attendance and student interactions ? Good attendance and more student interactions than in other courses. Students did not "fall sleep" nor leave early.
Grades were similar to other courses in which all the instruction was by lecture. Exams were 75% multiple choice and 25% longer answer (including essay and sketches).
Offering this course just once does not allow us enough data to measure its success. We hope to use the student comments while teaching it again in Spring 2000.