Teachers are often told to make instructional changes by various authorities yet often implement them individually. Most education-related research does not factor in individual teachers’ styles.
Ben Motz is a research scientist in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University and co-creator of ManyClasses, a new model for research. Instead of focusing one or two classrooms, ManyClasses takes a much broader approach.
“We’re not just kind of collecting a whole bunch of teachers and saying, ‘OK, give us your students to do a research study,’” Motz said. “We are involving the teachers and having them design the intervention as if it was something they were actually implementing in their class.”
ManyClasses’ first study began in 2017 and focused on instructor feedback timing. More than 2,000 students across 38 classes, 15 campuses and five Big Ten institutions participated. Teachers provided students delayed and immediate feedback for both halves of a semester.
Motz said the results favor teachers.
“It’s not just that we don’t have convincing evidence,” he said. “ It’s there is zero evidence that getting students their grades and their correctness feedback immediately is of benefit.”
In order to speed up future studies, Motz is developing a plugin for Canvas which will streamline data collection.
ManyClasses’ first study is set for online publication the week of July 12 in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.
