Assessing the Impact of a Course on Student Attitudes and Knowledge

Extract

One of the more interesting and under researched questions concerning university teaching deals with the impact courses have on students’ cognitive knowledge and attitudes. While considerable attention has been devoted to “how to” increase cognitive knowledge, there have not been many attempts to study such changes in regularly taught courses. In similar fashion, there have been a variety of attempts to study attitudinal changes, but these attempts have often been unassociated with specific teaching methodology or course design. For instance, the political socialization literature has dealt with attitude formation and attitude change in college age youth, but there was little concern for the impact a specific course might have on those attitudes.