written by Mark L. McKinnon and Wendell H. Potter

In the UC Davis introductory physics course for life science majors, variations in lab activity instructions were introduced to investigate their influence on gender performance differences. Systematic instructions were compared to unguided, open-ended instructions. On preliminary examination, the performance difference between females and males was unaffected by the different instructions. However, there is some evidence that the open-ended instructions did increase students' conceptual understanding in general.

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Published September 1, 2005
Last Modified July 8, 2013

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