Previous literature has focused on students' perceptions of participation in experiments, but has not measured the effect of participation on learning. In Study 1, students rated their perceptions of learning about psychology; they compared the classroom experience to experiment participation, reading about psychology, or summarizing a journal…

To determine whether a classroom experiment improved the learning of experimental method, at the start of the semester 2 introductory psychology classes took a 10-question multiple-choice pretest on experimental method. Two days later, before the instructor covered the relevant material in the course, 1 class took part in a classroom experiment on…