The Effect of Active Learning Methods on Student Retention in Engineering Statistics

Abstract An experiment was carried out to investigate the long-term effects of active learning methods on student retention in an introductory engineering statistics class. Two classes of students participated in the study—one class was taught using traditional lecture-based learning, and the other class stressed group projects and cooperative learning-based methods. Retention was measured by examining the students immediately after the course finished, and then again eight months later. The findings suggest that active learning can help to increase retention for students with average or below average scores. Graphical displays of the data, along with standard statistical analyses, help explain the observed difference in retention between students in the two different learning environments.