Student Performance and Attitudes in a Contingency Management Course

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Abstract
Grade performances in a personalized instruction course are compared with those in traditionally-taught courses for students with good, average, and poor academic records. Average and poor students perform much better in a personalized instruction course than in traditionally-taught courses, and good students perform somewhat better. Course evaluation results suggest three factors that contribute to the particular effectiveness of contingency management techniques with average to poor students. 1.) Students tend to perceive the personalized instruction course as requiring a large amount of work, relative to their other courses for the semester, and to match their work input into the course with this perception. 2.) The method appears to produce “self-generated” reinforcers such as feelings of achievement and interest in course content which are unusual experiences for these students. 3.) Aspects of the technique modify poor study habits in a direction that leads to higher grade performance.

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