Whilst it is intuitively clear that alternative methods of teaching may convey more information to students, it is often difficult (especially within social sciences) to find a way to teach a non-practical subject in a practical way. The aim of this research was to: identify possible practical ways of teaching in the social sciences, specifically economics and law; and quantify the effectiveness of alternative practical classes through exam performance.

Each member of the learning set took one tutorial topic and designed two alternative methods of teaching: one through their normal, formal instruction (akin to giving a lecture); the other using a practical method – a game, making the students lead the tutorial or a mock trial. Approximately half of the tutorial groups were taught through formal instruction, the other through the practical alternative. To provide a quantitative measure of performance in the tutorial a five minute quiz was administered at the end. The quiz was a short question on the topic covered in the tutorial. The students had to apply what they had learnt in the tutorial to answer the question. They were also required to complete a questionnaire which provided information on student characteristics that were used in the subsequent regression analysis.

So what effect do different teaching methods have on performance in tutorials? Two sets of regressions were estimated on a sample of 158 students. The first regressed the quiz score on a dummy variable which took the value 1 if the tutorial was taught through formal instruction and 0 otherwise, and other control variables. It was found that quiz scores were higher for students who were taught through formal instruction, rather than by one of the alternative methods. Tutorials taught in a formal manner appear more likely to have a positive effect on the amount of information students retain in the short run.

Regressing the effect of the teaching dummy, and the quiz score on the exam mark for the module it was found that students who did better in the quiz did better in the module exam. However, concern that this did not control for the biases brought about by for instance, concern that only good students attend tutorials or good students do well in exams however they are taught, previous exam performance was included in the estimation. This variable had more effect on the module exam mark, than the teaching method or quiz score.

This raises a number of issues, in particular will practical teaching methods only be successful if they help students to perform better in exams? This study explored alternative methods of teaching but measured success through existing exam structures. Not surprisingly the existing formal method of instruction performs better in the existing structure of assessment. This then raises the much bigger question of whether exams measure the sorts of qualities that HE is expected to cultivate in students.