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This paper explores the effect of a paired lab course on students’ course outcomes in nonmajors introductory biology at the University of Alaska Anchorage. We compare course completion and final grades for 10,793 students (3736 who simultaneously enrolled in the lab and 7057 who did not). Unconditionally, students who self-select into the lab are more likely to complete the course and to earn a higher grade than students who do not. However, when we condition on observable course, academic, and demographic characteristics, we find much of this difference in student performance outcomes is attributable to selection bias, rather than an effect of the lab itself. The data and discussion challenge the misconception that labs serve as recitations for lecture content, noting that the learning objectives of science labs should be more clearly articulated and assessed independent of lecture course outcomes.
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This content will become publicly available on July 19, 2026
Can Motivated Students Do More Activities?
The “Doer Effect” is the empirical phenomenon observed as a stronger correlational relationship between students who complete more activities and their course learning outcomes compared to those who complete fewer activities or watch fewer videos. In this paper, we extended prior evidence of a “Doer Effect” to investigate how doing more can be related not only to better learning outcomes but also to motivational ones. Specifically, we investigated persistence as the student’s willingness to continue working on course activities. We used secondary analyses of data from MOOC that taught Advanced Placement (AP) Introductory Java Programming to high school students using the digital textbook platform RuneStone. Although we failed to identify a doer effect in learning outcomes, our analyses do suggest that completing more activities is related to longer persistence in the course than reading more pages or watching more videos. This effect does not appear to be limited to highly motivated students.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2418655
- PAR ID:
- 10632298
- Editor(s):
- Akram, Bita; Shi, Yang; Brusilovsky, Peter; Price, Thomas; Koedinger, Ken; Carvalho, Paulo; Zhang, Shan; Lan, Andrew; Leinonen, Juho
- Publisher / Repository:
- 9th Educational Data Mining in Computer Science Education (CSEDM) Workshop at EDM2025
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Introduction to Programming Java Doer Effect Student Motivation
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Palermo, Italy
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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