I chose to use my time during the march madness weeks to conduct experiments that I thought would give me valuable information for my project. I decided that I wanted to compare the effects of teaching to the effects of the learning environment. To accomplish this, I taught two courses on separate subjects to the same people, using good teaching for one course and a good learning environment for the other, and compared the results through an exam and a feedback form.
Hypothesis: The quality of the teaching will be more impactful on students' abilities to learn than the quality of the learning environment.
This course was the one that got good teaching and a bad learning environment. In order to teach well, I incorporated strategies such as encouraging students to connect the material to their own lives, and giving students opportunities to lead their own discussions about the material. In order to make the learning environment as bad as possible, I let the students keep their technology, which freqently distracted them; opened the windows in the classroom, which made the room very cold and uncomfortable as well as letting noises from the outside world enter the classroom; and put demotivational posters on the wall to make the classroom convey negative emotions to the students.
This course was the one that got bad teaching and a good environment. To make the teaching ineffective, I took every method that I used in the previous run of the experiment and reversed them. I tried to seem as nervous/uninterested as possible by slouching in a chair as opposed to standing up straight, mumbling instead of projecting my voice clearly to the class, and dressing very casually. I went through the course material with my only goal being to simply get through it, and did not take measures to help my students absorb it better, such as making connections. However, the environment was much less distracting than the first time, which I accomplished by shutting the doors and windows to block outside distractions, having the students put their devices in a phone bin upon entering the class, and seating them in a semi-circular formation, which helps to facilitate discussion.
Week 1 Class Average: 87%
Week 2 Class Average: 62%
Week 1 Feedback: My class rated my teaching as a 4/5. They rated the environment as a 2/5. Some specific feedback regarding my teaching was that my class liked how I encouraged them to make connections, how I incorporated some humor into the teaching, and how I gave them space to discuss. Some specific feedback regarding the environment was that my class didn't like how some students were distracted by their electronic devices, that the room felt too cold because of the open windows, and that they felt distracted by noises coming from outside the classroom.
Week 2 Feedback: My class rated my teaching as a 2/5. They rated the environment as a 3.5/5. Some specific feedback regarding the teaching was that my class thought that I spoke too slowly, appeared to not care about the class, spoke too quietly, skipped over some information, never looked at the class when talking, and read the slides word for word. Some specific feedback regarding the learning environment was that my class thought there were less interruptions, the room was more spacious, and the phone bin helped them feel less distracted.
Conclusion: My hypothesis was correct and the teaching ended up being way more significant than the environment. However, I have also come to the conclusion that the environment is more difficult of a variable to control than the teaching is.