Dr Michael W Fox Popular Books

Dr Michael W Fox Biography & Facts

The Dr. Fox effect is a correlation observed between teacher expressiveness, content coverage, student evaluation and student achievement. This effect also allows insight to other related effects and relationships between student achievement and evaluations of the teacher. Experiment The original experiment was performed at the University of Southern California School of Medicine in 1970 in which two speakers gave lectures to a classroom of MDs and PhDs (psychiatrists and psychologists) on a meaningless topic. The topic, "Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education", was chosen to eliminate any chances the students being lectured would know something about the actual subject. Students were divided into two separate classrooms; one classroom would be lectured by an actual scientist and the other by an actor, Michael Fox, who was given the identity "Dr. Myron L. Fox", a graduate of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In the first half of the study the actor was instructed to teach his material in a more monotone and inexpressive voice. This lecture was then compared to the control lecture by the scientist. After the lectures, the students were tested on the information they had learned. The students who attended the lecture taught by the scientist learned more about the material and performed better on the examination. However, when both the actor and the scientist presented their material in an engaging, expressive, and enthusiastic manner, the students rated Dr. Fox just as positively as the genuine professor. This lack of correlation between content-coverage and ratings resulting from conditions of strong expressiveness became known as "the Dr. Fox effect". In a critique of student evaluations of teaching, professor of law Deborah Jones Merritt summarized the Dr. Fox effect as it was observed in the first experiments: "The experimenters created a meaningless lecture and coached the actor to deliver it 'with an excessive use of double-talk, neologisms, non sequiturs, and contradictory statements.' At the same time, the researchers encouraged the actor to adopt a lively demeanor, convey warmth toward his audience, and intersperse his nonsensical comments with humor. The actor fooled not just one, but three separate audiences of professional and graduate students. Despite the emptiness of his lecture, fifty-five psychiatrists, psychologists, educators, graduate students, and other professionals produced evaluations of Dr. Fox that were overwhelmingly positive. The disturbing feature of the Dr. Fox study, as the experimenters noted, is that Fox's nonverbal behaviors so completely masked a meaningless, jargon-filled, and confused presentation." A 1980 study found that prestige of research could even be increased by a confounding writing style, with research competency being correlated positively to reading difficulty. Anecdotal evidence has since been reported by researchers. Subsequent research Study of Air Force Academy In this study, students were assigned randomly to professors so that the results would not be skewed by better students enrolling with better professors. These professors were then given all the same syllabi, curriculum levels, and final examinations so the difficulty was even for all groups. There was also a follow-up course given to the students to test the value of fundamental learning that the students received. These professors taught introductory calculus to a group of more than 10,000 students to achieve the proper information. When the evaluations were processed, the professors who were less experienced and less qualified had the best evaluations and best performances on the final examination. However the students who attended the examinations given by the more qualified and experienced professors did best on the follow-up examination. This created speculation that the professors who were more experienced taught the material in a more general manner to produce a more fundamental understanding. This became obvious as a result of the follow-up examinations. The results showed that the professors who instilled a more fundamental meaning of the material appeared worse on the initial examination and evaluations, but eventually obtained better academic results. This finding renders questionable the validity of student evaluations. Eyal Peer and Elisha Babad Criticisms of the original study include the experiment's lack of a control group, the use of a "Yes/No" scale, and lack of measurement evaluating learning among the participants. In a study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology in 2014, researchers Eyal Peer of Carnegie Mellon University and Elisha Babad of Hebrew University of Jerusalem recreated the original 1973 study taking these criticisms into consideration. Through their research, they found that the Dr. Fox effect was still present despite the manipulations they added. Manipulations included the use of a more in-depth questionnaire, removal of the first thirty seconds of video describing the credentials of the lecturer, and a warning at the beginning of the questionnaire to ensure that participants responded honestly. However, the researchers found that although the students with a charismatic teacher enjoyed the lecture more, they reported that they had not actually learned anything new. This is in contrast to the original study, which argued that people attending the lecture actually believed they were learning new material. From their research they were able to reason that an enthusiastic speaker may entertain an audience, but much more is required to be a successful teacher. Halo effect The halo effect shares similar qualities to those of the Dr. Fox effect in relation to student evaluations of teachers. The halo effect is a cognitive bias in which our general impression of a person influences how we feel and think about their character. For example, attractive-looking people create a halo effect in which we perceive them as kind, smart or successful, but it may not be true because their attractive appearance interferes with our judgment of their performance capabilities. In one study examining halo effect on student evaluation, there was a better rating for teachers who provided more nonverbal immediacy, but the study also found out that a better evaluation of teachers was related to a greater halo effect. In the Dr. Fox effect study, a similar effect was found when Dr. Fox presented the lecture in an expressive manner. Effects of instructor characteristics on student evaluations From the experiment of Dr. Fox effect, the expressiveness of a teacher when delivering lecture material can affect student evaluation of the teacher. Other than that, individual differences among teachers such as personality, popularity, lecture fluency, non verbal behavior, and attractiveness can also affect student evaluation of teachers. Personality Instructor personality is one factor that has been shown to affect course.... Discover the Dr Michael W Fox popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Dr Michael W Fox books.