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We conducted a meta-analysis to test the impacts of one active learning teaching strategy, group work, on student performance by calculating estimates across 91 studies from 53 articles. Our overall estimate indicates that the implementation of group work in biology classrooms increased student performance by 1.00 standard deviation, which we contextualized as a change greater than one letter grade. Moderator analyses revealed that this increase in performance held across all group sizes, class sizes, biology and life science majors and nonmajors, and whether the groups were assigned by the instructor. However, we did not observe increased performance in graduate level courses, in cases where group work was incorporated for only part of the course term (e.g., less than a semester or quarter) or when the group work was not graded. These results demonstrate that group work leads to impressive boosts in student performance and underscores the value of studying specific active learning strategies.

 

Abstract To produce viable offspring, organisms may assess mates via criteria that include traits, such as sex, species, age, reproductive status, population identity and individual quality. Copepods are small, ubiquitous crustaceans that live in freshwater and marine systems around the world whose patterns of mate choice have been long studied in numerous species. Herein, we synthesized decades of experiments describing sexual selection in copepods to assess the importance of mating criteria. We used formal, meta-analytical techniques and mixed modeling to quantify the likelihood of non-random mating associated with mating criteria. In our synthesis of the scientific literature, we found that copepods use several criteria when assessing mates and that these criteria are associated with different likelihood estimates. We report the strongest likelihood of non-random mating when copepods assess the reproductive status of females or when copepods select between conspecific vs. heterospecific mates. We found weak likelihood of non-random mating in studies that provide mates from different populations or that manipulate operational sex ratio. Studies that directly test assessment of individual quality are sparse in copepods when compared to equivalent studies in vertebrates, and we encourage future researchers to explore whether copepods use individual characteristics as key mating criteria.