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Does cohort size matter when teaching?Rodney Arambewela,E John McElvaney, Leanne Morris and Prof. Greg Wood

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• Abstract • Past literature appears to support the predominant influence of the class size effect on learning.• Based on an analysis of 22,223 student grades and student evaluations in metropolitan, regional and rural

campuses of an Australian university, this study investigates the impact of class size on student engagement and student performance.

• Factors other than entry level scores, contribute to student outcomes and student engagement. • The study reveals that student satisfaction of teaching quality is higher in the rural and regional campuses where

the cohorts are smaller than at the metropolitan campus. • This may be an indication that class size seems to have a predominant influence on student engagement and

learning outcomes.•  • Field of Research: Student engagement•  • Key words: Class size, Student engagement, Student performance, Learning environment

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Literature Review

• Biggs (1999)• Glass and Smith (1979)• Nye et al(2001)• Devlin et al (2009)• Gilbert (1995)• Ausse (2010)

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Methodology• The research sought to examine nine core units of the Bachelor of Commerce

degree offered by The University using quantitative data obtained from The University

• The study investigated three areas:• The number of students who responded to (Student Evaluation of Teaching Units

(SETU) requests as a percentage of the total campus cohort. • The academic results of students by unit/campus and their ENTER scores. • A comparison of campus academic results with the SETU findings to determine if

there are correlations between the size of the cohort and student engagement and outcomes.

• • The study concentrated on identifying whether student engagement differs across

different cohorts at the Metro, Regional and Rural campuses.

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Methodology• The base data used was:• The SETU information from Trimester 1 of 2008, 2009 and 2010. 22,223 Students

were asked to rank their agreement of comments. The specific areas of analysis from this data were:

 • Question 1. This unit was well taught. • Question 5. The teaching staff gave me helpful feedback and • Question 7. I would recommend this unit to other students.

• ENTER scores which are publically available and identify specific entry level scores for Metro, Regional and Rural for 2008 -2010.

 • Academic results. Overall student results were obtained from The University. Data

was aggregated for anonymity and there were no student identifiers, hence no ethics approval was required.

 • Limitations• Small class sizes at Rural make it difficult to generalise results, however they can

provide indicative results. A further limitation is the mix of students. Metro has a large International population and for many, English is not their first language. Both Regional and Rural have a low percentage of international students.

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Fig 1 Student Grades and SETU data

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Figure 2 Average Grades and SETU response rates

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Figure 3 Average responses to SETU Q1, ENTER scores and Q1 Results

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Figure 4 Average Median ENTER by Campus and Grades

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Figure 5 Average SETU results by Question 1, 5 & 7, Response Rate and Campus.

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Averaged SETU by Response Rates 08-10

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Conclusions and Recommendations

• The comparative analysis of this research data confirmed the belief that there might be some validity to the belief that smaller class sizes produce not only greater engagement but that Regional and Rural students might appreciate and value their classes more so than their Metro counterparts.

 • The results suggest that as one moves from the larger classes of the metropolis

to the more intimate regional and rural classes, students tend to respond better to the educational experiences that they receive. This is evidenced by higher than expected academic results, higher student engagement in the unit evaluation process and satisfaction with the quality of the teaching.

• • The small numbers of students at the Rural campus is a limitation of this

research, making it difficult to generalize findings. However it appears that in respect to SETU responses the further from the Metro campus one is educated, the more students appear to value the educational experiences provided.

• Further research is required to determine whether these findings are consistent across other universities and what other factors might affect student engagement and outcomes.

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