Impact of Discussion Sessions on Students’ Learning Outcomes in an Econometrics Class

This paper adds to the literature on supplemental instruction by estimating the impact of attending at least 50% of discussion sessions taught by PhD students on the overall performance of undergraduate students in an introductory econometrics class. Past studies on this topic have mostly analyzed outcomes of students from principles level courses, where supplemental instructors were undergraduate students. There are two main findings in this paper. Firstly, for the overall sample, after controlling for students’ demographic and academic characteristics, attending at least 50% of the sessions has no statistically significant impact on final course scores, although the coefficient is positive. Secondly, scores of academically weaker students (measured by their past academic performance in college) increase by attending more sessions, while scores of academically stronger students go down. Therefore, this paper shows a variation in the effects from supplemental instruction, with weaker students reaping the most benefits.