AN EXPERIMENTAL EXAMINATION OF GROUP SIZE EFFECTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING


Computer Simulation and Learning Theory, Volume 3, 1976 

 534 

AN EXPERIMENTAL EXAMINATION OF GROUP SIZE EFFECTS: 

IMPLICATIONS FOR EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING 

 

J. Duane Hoover 

Carlton J. Whitehead 

Texas Tech University 

 
Some of our early research indicated that the size of experiential learning labs in the first course in 

Management had a profound effect on I) levels of student satisfaction and 2) levels of student performance 
on cognitive exams. To test the hypotheses derived from the earlier study, we assigned 400 students in the 
first course of Management to two types of experiential labs. One type of lab involving 200 student 
subjects, contained 15 or fewer members, while the other always contained 20 or more members. The 
experiment attempted to differentiate levels of student satisfaction and cognitive exam performance. 
 

The results of this experiment did not verify the predicted outcomes. While levels of student 
satisfaction remained significantly higher for the smaller labs, it was not demonstrated that this type of 
environment ‘was more conducive to cognitive exam performance. While there were many factors 
interacted with the results of this experiment, including teaching assistant effectiveness, tine of day of the 
labs, etc., the experiment none the less has profound implications for the practice and extension of 
experiential learning techniques. 
 

The implication to be drawn from this study is that even a large experiential lab, where numbers 
would appear to be “unmanageable” is significantly more prone to produce high levels of student 
satisfaction without sacrificing student cognitive exam performance - when compared to cognitive rather 
than experiential lab- experiences. While lab size, in an experiential mode, does not produce significant 
differences, our research has indicated that experiential labs, regardless of size, produce significantly 
higher levels of student satisfaction without sacrificing cognitive exam performance.