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Dr. Fox effect
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Dr. Fox effect
The Dr. Fox effect is a correlation observed between teacher attire, 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.
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.
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 that 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.
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Dr. Fox effect
The Dr. Fox effect is a correlation observed between teacher attire, 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.
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.
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 that 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.