Observational Study Versus Experiment Project

A Community College is interested in determining if students perform better in online courses or in the traditional classroom setting. Suppose that they approach us and want us to find an answer to their question and support it statistically. They have told us that they have 100 students registering for Math 144 in the Spring Semester that are willing to take whichever mode (online or regular classroom) that we choose.

Answer the following questions on a separate piece of paper.

1. Should we use an experiment or an observational study? Why?

2. Design either the study or the experiment. Describe it in detail and draw a picture of it using the diagram format from Chapters 5 and 6.

3. What are the explanatory and response variables?

4. Are there any lurking variables in your design? If so, describe them. If not, explain why?

5. Would it be necessary for this situation to be double-blind? Why or why not?

6. Can we generalize the results of your design to draw conclusions about all online students at the community college? Why or why not?

7. Suppose you also want to account for whether male or female students do better in thetwo different modes of learning and you have 50 males and 50 females to work with.Re-design your set-up from #2 to account for this. (Hint: Use a block design.)