Examples of Measures in a Particular SOTL Project: Pre-course data comparisons Unit 3 B: page 17 of 24
 

 

The purpose of background measures is to investigate whether students across semesters are “fairly similar.” This controls for the possibility that any improvement shown on outcome measures in the study is because the class using the intervention consisted of higher achievers than the comparison group.

In this case, the higher achievers appeared to be in the 1998 class rather than the class involved in the intervention (2000).