Question 7.58

image 28. A college allows students to choose either classroom or self-paced instruction in a basic mathematics course. The college wants to compare the effectiveness of self-paced and regular instruction. Someone proposes giving the same final exam to all students in both versions of the course and comparing the average score of those who took the self-paced option with the average score of students in regular sections.

  1. Explain why confounding makes the results of that study worthless.
  2. Given 30 students who are willing to use either regular or self-paced instruction, outline an experimental design to compare the two methods of instruction. Then use Table 7.1 (page 298), starting at line 108, to carry out the randomization.