The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of group testing as a pedagogical technique to enhance learning in a difficult subject such as statistics. Individual test scores were compared to their group test scores for the same, identical test. A t test was used to compare the scores for 157 randomly selected MBA students enrolled…

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a combinatorial optimization problem that requires finding the shortest path through a set of points ("cities") that returns to the starting point. Because humans provide heuristic near-optimal solutions to Euclidean versions of the problem, it has sometimes been used to investigate human visual…

The primary purpose of this study was to compare the results of the Michigan State University (MSU) unproctored examination to the results of the proctored examination. Both examinations are used to determine whether first time freshmen at MSU are ready for a standard mathematics course or if a remedial course is necessary. In addition to…

Spatial skills have been shown to be important to success in an engineering curriculum, and some question if poor spatial skills prevent students from entering STEM fields or if students with weak spatial skills avoid engineering disciplines believed to highly spatially-oriented. Veurink and Hamlin (2011) found that freshmen students entering…

The 2014 Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card is the Mackinac Center's second effort to measure high school performance. The first high school assessment was published in 2012, followed by the Center's 2013 elementary and middle school report card, which used a similar methodology to evaluate school performance. The…

The Michigan Context and Performance Report Card measures school performance by adjusting standardized test scores to account for student background. Comparing schools using unadjusted test scores ignores the significant relationship between academic performance and student socioeconomic background--a dynamic outside a school's control. The…

Robotics competitions for K-12 students are popular, but are students really learning and improving their STEM scores through robotics competitions? If not, why not? If they are, how much more effective is learning through competitions than traditional classes? Is there room for improvement? What is the best robotics competition model to maximize…

Assessing a high school's effectiveness is not straightforward. Comparing a school's standardized test scores to those of other schools is one approach to measuring effectiveness, but a major objection to this method is that students' test scores tend to be related to students' "socioeconomic" status--family household income, for…

Utilizing data derived from 277 rural, male respondents initially enrolled in Lenawee County, Michigan high schools, the Rotter's Internal-External Locus of Control Scale was employed to test the hypothesis that locus of control will have interactive rather than additive effects on the process of status attainment. Locus of control was defined as…

SEVERAL PROBLEMS WHICH ARISE WITH THE USE OF FILM AND TELEVISION IN INSTRUCTION WERE INVESTIGATED. STUDY CONSIDERATIONS WERE FOCUSED ON DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN RELEVANT AND IRREVELANT LEARNING BY COMPARING LABORATORY TEACHING TECHNIQUES FOR AN ENGINEERING COURSE WITH FILM PRESENTATIONS OF THE SAME MATERIAL. THERE WERE NO OVERALL SIGNIFICANT…