Table 1.
Classroom practice/ occurrence cards provided to students during interviews.
Table 2.
Demographics of students who completed the survey.
Table 3.
Demographics of students who completed interviews.
Fig 1.
Distribution of general class anxiety means for all students in the study.
Likert scale ranged from 1–7, with 1 being no anxiety and 7 being high anxiety. Line represents number of students per range of general anxiety means.
Fig 2.
Average student anxiety for each of the five active learning practices.
Cold calling caused significantly higher anxiety than completing worksheets, working in groups, or using clickers, but not higher than volunteering to answer (p < 0.001). Cohen’s f was 0.23, indicating a medium effect size. The Likert scale is 1–5, with 1 being not anxious at all, and 5 being very anxious. Data are mean anxiety ± standard error of the mean (SEM).
Fig 3.
General class anxiety means showing significant differences among students in the three classes (p< 0.001).
Students in CMB 1 had significantly higher general class anxiety than those in CMB 2 or OEB. Cohen’s f was calculated as 0.32, indicating a medium effect size. The Likert scale ranged from 1–7, with 1 being no anxiety and 7 being high anxiety. Data are mean anxiety ± standard error of the mean (SEM).
Fig 4.
Self-reported student anxiety toward using clickers (A), volunteering to answer a question in class (B), and completing worksheets (C) among the three lecture classes. The Likert scale is 1–5, with 1 being not anxious at all, and 5 being very anxious. Data are mean anxiety ± standard error of the mean (SEM). (A) All three courses differ from one another in student-reported anxiety regarding the use of clickers (p < 0.001, Cohen’s f = 0.27, a medium effect size). (B) Students in OEB reported significantly lower anxiety than those in CMB 2 about volunteering to answer a question in class (p = 0.015, Cohen’s f = 0.17, a small effect size). (C) Students in CMB 1 reported higher anxiety about worksheets than students in OEB or CMB 2 reported (p < 0.001, Cohen’s f = 0.25, a medium effect size).
Table 4.
Number of students (out of 12) who chose particular cards representing classroom practices that caused them anxiety, along with themes and representative quotes about why that practice caused them anxiety.
Fig 5.
General class anxiety compared among self-reported letter grade (A) and intention to persist in the biology major (B). (A) mean general class anxiety scores on final survey based on self-reported letter grade in class. Students who indicated they were receiving a C, D, or F reported significantly higher anxiety than those who reported earning an A or B (p < 0.001). Cohen’s f = 0.43, indicating a large effect size. (B) Mean general class anxiety scores on final survey comparing students who indicated they were leaving the Biology major versus those who were continuing (p = 0.017). Hedges’ g = 0.50, indicating a medium effect size. Data are mean anxiety ± standard error of the mean (SEM).