By SooToday.com Staff
SooToday.com
Wednesday, September 23, 2009

NEWS RELEASE

LAKE SUPERIOR
STATE UNIVERSITY

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LSSU sociology professor's research on gender and college exams published in Active Learning in Higher Education

SAULT STE. MARIE, MI - A Lake Superior State University sociology professor's research on the differences in male and female students' perceptions of tests and learning was published this month in the education journal Active Learning in Higher Education.

In "Gendered perceptions of learning and fairness when choice between exam types is offered," Prof. R. Kirk Mauldin, Ph.D. examined the differences in male and female students' perceptions of how much they had learned and how fairly their performance had been measured when a choice between written, multiple-choice or mixed testing formats was introduced into different social science classrooms.

"Results revealed that introducing assessment choice into a classroom has significant but small effects on perceptions of learning and fairness," Mauldin said. "Specifically, male students became more convinced over the course of the term that they were being evaluated fairly when they were only permitted to take selective response tests, and less satisfied with the fairness of the evaluation if they were
offered a choice."

"Female students were found to believe the opposite, and were more likely to believe that the course was fair and that they learned more if they were given a choice. Interestingly, neither male nor female students received significantly higher or lower grades regardless of
whether they were given a choice over the course of the semester or what type of exam they ended up taking," Mauldin added.

Mauldin concluded that choice, at least in terms of assessment, seems to make males slightly more frustrated with the learning process while simultaneously increasing the satisfaction of female students and said this may have implications on program retention and student evaluations of individual courses.

Mauldin has been teaching at LSSU since 2006 and is advisor of the LSSU chapter of the Alpha Kappa Delta international sociology honor society.

His research has appeared in journals such as Sociological Imagination, Race, Gender and Class, and the International Journal of Humor Research.

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