This article reports on an investigation into the correlations between students' understandings of introductory astronomy concepts and the correctness and coherency of their written responses to targeted Lecture-Tutorial questions.

We compare student learning and perception data from astronomy, physics, and geology courses taught in a traditional classroom with individual desks to the same classes taught in a large auditorium. In a large student sample (1,593 students), there is no clear difference between rooms in measures of failure rates or average final grades. However,…