Research Participation versus Classroom Lecture: A Comparison of Student Learning

Previous literature has focused on students' perceptions of participation in experiments, but has not measured the effect of participation on learning. In Study 1, students rated their perceptions of learning about psychology; they compared the classroom experience to experiment participation, reading about psychology, or summarizing a journal article. In Experiment 2, students either participated in an experiment or listened to a lecture on the experiment's concept. Results indicate that students not only preferred experimental participation to classroom lectures, but that students learned as much about the psychological concept by participating in an experiment as they did by listening to a lecture.