The effect of relevance strategies on student perceptions of introductory courses

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to test whether increasing the relevancy of course assignments in a large multisection introductory public-speaking course would lead to improvements in student perceptions of course outcomes. Survey responses from 1,878 students were analyzed to test whether differences exist between students enrolled in classes held during the spring 2015 semester and those enrolled in classes held in fall 2015 during which the more relevant course assignments were incorporated. Results reveal that increasing the relevancy of assignments is associated with greater perceived course relevance, motivation for participating in the class, and perceptions of learning. This course redesign demonstrates that simply altering course assignments can positively impact student perceptions and motivation for participating in the class in multisection introductory courses.

KEYWORDS:

• Enhancing course relevance
• introductory courses
• multisection courses
• course assignments
• studentperceptions

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Debra Runshe for her assistance on this paper.

Notes on contributors

Heather N. Fedesco (Ph.D., 2015, Purdue University) is a Mellon Pedagogy Researcher in the Office of the President at Colorado College.

Ashley Kentner (M.A., 2014, Purdue University) is a graduate student in the Linguistics Department at Purdue University.

Jane Natt (M.A., 1999, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) is an Associate Professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University.

ORCID

Heather N. Fedesco http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1163-1903

Notes

1. In order to remove possible confounds, we omitted specialty sections of the public-speaking course (e.g., honors, online, learning communities, etc.) from the analyses.

2. We omitted students under the age of 18 from the analyses.