Socratic lecturing
- It involved frequent use of questions posed to the class, with answers solicited from students who raised their hands. In addition to calling on “high responders,” wider participation was encouraged. The intention was to engage student attention and provide feedback to the instructor.

Ungraded active-learning exercises
- It encouraged active participation in class.
- The exercises used were minute papers, case studies with question sets, writing answers to exam-like questions followed by discussion, and in-class demonstrations with student participation. In most cases, each class session involved at least three such exercises. The intention was to give students practice with the higher-order cognitive skills required to do well on exams.

Clicker questions
- They were multiple-choice questions presented in class. Students responded with a personal response device or “clicker”. Individual students would first answer on their own and then re-answered after discussion with one or more students seated near them. The instructor asked three to five clicker questions per class session; in most cases, a maximum of three clicker points was possible for each class session, assigned for right/wrong responses. The intention was to develop student thinking at the application and analysis level and encourage peer teaching.

Practice exams
- They were online, weekly, peer-graded exercises. Students were given 35 min to respond to five short-answer questions. After answers were submitted, software developed in the department randomly and anonymously gave each student a set of answers to grade, along with sample answers and grading rubrics. At two points per question, there were 10 points possible each week representing ∼8% of the total course grade.
- The intention was to give students practice with answering high-level, exam-style, written questions under time pressure, but in a low-stakes environment.

Class notes summaries
- They were weekly online assignments that required students to state the three most important concepts introduced each day in lecture, along with a question based on the idea that they understood the least well in that class session.
- Students were given a course point per week for participation, with a five-point bonus for completing the exercise every week of the course—for a total of ∼2% of total course points.
- The intentions were to help organize the course material and increase metacognition (the ability to identify the most important information and the most poorly understood concepts)

Reading quizzes
- They opened every afternoon after class and closed the morning of the next class.
- They consisted of 5–10 multiple choice questions, delivered and corrected via an online quizzing system, and tested understanding of basic vocabulary and concepts. Typically, the two-point reading quizzes summed to ∼8% of total course points.
- The intention was to make students responsible for learning basic course content on their own and prepare them to work on higher-order cognitive skills in class.

In-class group exercises
- It includes one to three exam-style questions on the topic currently being discussed in class.
- Graduate and peer teaching assistants (TAs) moved around the lecture hall to monitor the conversations and answer queries from students.
- No course points were awarded during these activities. Participation was encouraged because the instructor closed the small-group discussions and then called on students, from a randomized class list, to solicit student responses in front of the entire class.
- Typically, a single 50-min class session included five or six group exercises, with 12–15 students called on each day
- The intention was to help students develop higher-order cognitive skills, with peer and TA feedback, in a low-stakes environment.

Increased Course Structure Improves Performance in Introductory Biology: Details about Course Design

University of Pennsylvania

The authors hypothesized that highly structured course designs, which implement reading quizzes and/or extensive in-class active-learning activities and weekly practice exams, can lower failure rates in an introductory biology course, compared with low-structure course designs that are based on lecturing and a few high-risk assessments. The experimenters controlled for instructor effects by analyzing data from quarters when the same instructor taught the course, exam equivalence with new assessments called the Weighted Bloom’s Index and Predicted Exam Score, and student equivalence using a regression-based Predicted Grade. The authors also tested the hypothesis that points from reading quizzes, clicker questions, and other assignments in highly structured courses inflate. They found no evidence that points from active-learning exercises inflate grades or reduce the impact of exams on final grades. When controlled for variation in student ability, failure rates were lower in a moderately structured course design and were dramatically lower in a highly structured course design. This result supports the hypothesis that active-learning exercises can make students more skilled learners and help bridge the gap between poorly prepared students and their better-prepared peers.

Increased Course Structure Improves Performance in Introductory Biology

Course Background
•	This research focused on students in Biology 180, the first course in a three-quarter introductory biology sequence designed for undergraduates intending to major in biology or related disciplines at the University of Washington. This course is a five-unit course offered every quarter.
•	The data come from six quarters when one of the authors (S.F.) was the only instructor. The course included four 50-min class sessions and a 2-hour or 3-hous laboratory session each week. In every quarter there were 400 exam points possible; all exam questions were written, 

Student Demographics
•	During the study period, most students had to complete a chemistry prerequisite before registering for Biology 180. The majority of students were in their sophomore year.
•	In the most recent quarter analyzed here, the course’s demographic makeup was 61.1% female and 38.9% male; 46.7% Caucasian, 38.5% Asian-American, and 7.4% Under-represented minorities (African-American, Hispanic, Native American, or Pacific Islander), with 7.4% of students declining to declare their ethnicity.
•	In addition, 16.4% of the students were in the UW Educational Opportunity Program, meaning that they were identified as economically or educationally disadvantaged.
•	These demographic data are typical across the quarters and years of the study.


Increased Course Structure Improves Performance in Introductory Biology: Course Background and Student Demographics

Increased Course Structure Improves Performance in Introductory Biology: Course Design

Weighted Bloom’s Index.
- Bloom’s taxonomy of learning identifies six levels of understanding on any topic and they are used to create a Weighted Bloom’s Index, which summarizes the average Bloom’s level of exam questions weighted by the points possible. Level 1 and 2 questions test lower-order cognitive skills. Level 3–6 questions assess higher-order cognitive skills. Specific Weighted Bloom’s Index values conform to each Bloom’s level
- A Weighted Bloom’s Index for every exam in the study is calculated by recruiting three experienced TAs to assign a Bloom’s level to every exam question given in each quarter. If two of the three raters agree, the experimenters assigned the majority rule rating.When ratings were sequential, the middle value is accepted. When ratings were nonsequential, the arithmetic average is accepted
- The raters were trained in “Blooming” exams by one of the authors (M.P.W.) and assessed questions presented in a common format and random order.
- The raters knew that they were assessing Biology 180 exam questions. But they were blind to the quarter and year, the study’s intent, and to the hypothesis being tested by the ratings. Point values for each question were omitted to avoid any bias introduced by high- vs. low-point-value questions

Predicted Exam Score
- Predicted Exam Score (PES) is calculated by recruiting three experienced Tas (different from the individuals who did the Bloom’s ratings) who were also experienced graders to predict the average number of points that students would receive on each part of each exam question in the study.
- The PES raters were blind to the study’s intent and the hypothesis being tested with the predicted-points data.
- After a norming session when they discuss their predictions for average points, each grader worked individually and not discussed. The arithmetic average of the three ratings submitted are computed to arrive at a single predicted-average-points value for each of the exam-question parts after the norming session.

Increased Course Structure Improves Performance in Introductory Biology: Measurements

There are five results for the experiments.
- Results Regarding Exam Equivalence
- Results Regarding Exam Impact on Course Grade
- Results Regarding Student Equivalence across Quarters
- Results Regarding Evaluating the Drop Rate
- Results Regarding Changes in Failure Rate in Biology 180

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