Do Students Benefit From Supplemental Instruction? Evidence From a First-Year Statistics Subject in Economics and Business

Don Lewis (), Martin O'Brien (), Sally Rogan () and Brett Shorten ()
Additional contact information
Don Lewis: University of Wollongong, http://business.uow.edu.au/econ/who/index.html
Martin O'Brien: University of Wollongong, http://business.uow.edu.au/econ/who/index.html
Sally Rogan: University of Wollongong, http://business.uow.edu.au/econ/who/index.html
Brett Shorten: University of Wollongong, http://business.uow.edu.au/econ/who/index.html

Economics Working Papers from School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia

Abstract: Peer assisted study sessions (PASS) are a type of supplemental instruction (SI) that provide students with out-of-class study review sessions with a group of peers. A student, who has successfully completed the subject and acts as a mentor, facilitates the voluntary sessions. Results of the PASS program at the University of Wollongong have been quite positive in that students, on average, who attend more PASS, achieve higher marks. However, a simple comparison does not control for self-selection bias. We control for self-selection in two ways. Firstly, we use Heckman’s two-stage correction technique to analyze the 2002 cohort. Secondly, students in the 2003 cohort were randomly allocated into three groups of equal size: 1. A control group that was allocated to normal tutorials with standard class sizes and ineligible to attend PASS; 2. A group that was eligible to attend PASS and had normal tutorials of standard sizes; 3. A group that was ineligible to attend PASS but allocated to normal tutorials with smaller class sizes. The results of both methods are consistent and indicate the PASS program has a positive impact on the academic performance of students after correcting for selection bias.

Keywords: Economics Education; Teaching of Economics; Design of Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 C9 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2005
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu and nep-sog
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@ ... ts/doc/uow012204.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uow:depec1:wp05-21

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia School of Economics, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Siminski ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).