¶ … Experimental Literature by Celia Brown and Clive Belfield. The authors attempt to focus on the cost-effectiveness of educational lectures, and discuss the dearth of literature on the subject.

Reflective Review

The authors have tackled an interesting subject that is not normally considered when discussing finance and accounting issues. They discuss their purpose early in the paper. "Specifically, in this paper we undertake a cost-effectiveness review of the lecture mode of (higher) education. We compare this mode with four other modes and the measure of effectiveness is how well each mode imparts information to students" (Brown and Belfield 2). They also note that little study has been done in the area, even though lecturing is one of the most common forms of communication in higher education. The authors discuss how they analyzed and costed lectures, their research methods, and discuss their results and their validity. The authors created a cost template for their analysis, and compared the costs to three other forms of instruction: personalized systems of instruction, discussion/enquiry modes, and independent study.

The study went through several checks for effectiveness and validity of the data, and the two authors included a number of graphs and tables that helped back up their data and findings. The article is an excellent study of how a complicated analysis was created, implemented, tested, and results were determined, and would aid anyone interested in developing similar studies, especially if they were geared toward less studied data, such as this subject. Ultimately, the studies led the authors to conclude, despite higher operating costs up front, that lectures were indeed the most cost-effective mode of higher education. "Our results suggest that, based on the experimental evidence, there is no mode of education that is more clearly cost-effective than lectures for imparting information" (Brown and Belfield 18). However, they do concede that certain other educational modes may favor certain students, and other modes may also ultimately affect the earning and learning power of students. This article is an interesting study of a non-standard subject, and helps to illustrate how cost-effectiveness is relative to any operation, not just accounting and financial.

Bibliography

Brown, Celia, and Belfield, Clive. "How Cost-Effective Are Lectures? A Review of the Experimental Literature." NCSPE.org. 5 May 2003. 4 Nov. 2003. http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/belfieldbrown.pdf