ManyClasses 1: Assessing the generalizable effect of immediate versus delayed feedback across many college classes

Abstract

Psychology researchers have long attempted to identify educational practices that improve student learning. However, experimental research on these practices is often conducted in laboratory contexts or in a single class, threatening the external validity of the results. In this paper, we establish an experimental paradigm for evaluating the benefits of recommended practices across a variety of authentic educational contexts – a model we call ManyClasses. The core feature is that researchers examine the same research question and measure the same experimental effect across many classes spanning a range of topics, institutions, teacher implementations, and student populations. We report the first ManyClasses study, which examined how the timing of feedback on class assignments, either immediate or delayed by a few days, affected subsequent performance on class assessments. Across XX classes, [summarize effect of feedback timing, including key moderators]. More broadly, these findings provide evidence regarding the feasibility of conducting within-class randomized experiments across a range of naturally occurring learning environments.