Question

Do students learn geometry better from an online course or in class with a teacher? To find

out, a large high school set up an experiment with 500 student volunteers. The school randomly assigned
half of the students to take the geometry course online, watching videos to inform their learning. The
other half took a more traditional course with lectures by a teacher. The same teacher was used for both
courses, and both courses met for the same amount of time each day. At the end of the year, the success
of each program was measured by students’ scores on the geometry final exam, which was the same for
both courses.
a) Explain how this experiment used comparison.
b) Explain the purpose of randomly assigning the students to the two treatments.
c) Name two variables that were controlled in this experiment and why it was beneficial to control
these variables.

Answer 1

The high school experiment used comparison to gauge the effectiveness of online versus traditional classroom geometry learning by testing both groups with the same exam.

Step-by-step explanation:

The experiment to determine whether students learn geometry better from an online course or in-person instruction used a method of comparison by assessing the performance of two groups on the same final exam. Randomly assigning the students to the two treatments of either online learning or traditional classroom instruction ensures that each group is representative of the whole and reduces the impact of potential confounding variables that could bias the results.

Two variables that were controlled in this experiment were the teacher delivering the content and the daily duration of the courses. By having the same teacher for both the online and in-person courses, the quality of instruction is consistent between the two groups. Similarly, by having the courses meet for the same amount of time each day, the experiment controls for the effect that different amounts of instruction time might have on the final exam scores.