Are universities not gathering empirical data when they study the results of others’ efforts at scale? Study being the key word in that scenario, it’s more than just copying what they see, but understanding why it’s effective, and if it would be for them.
And it may be quicker and more reliable with less risk than A/B testing in their setting. The most highly trafficked web tech companies can gather statistically significant feedback data about a change in moments. A/B testing a curriculum or educational practice could take a semester or more, and then the risks are higher — it would be a two-sided hypothesis test where the B group could not only do better, but could also do much worse, and it would reflect poorly on the institution if so. People are paying tens of thousands of dollars per seat per year for the best education they can get. Seeing how many items are in the shopping cart right on the “checkout” button doesn’t really reflect poorly on Amazon, but it could help Amazon increase conversion rates by .03%, which could mean millions of dollars at their scale, and they could also complete the test fairly quickly given their volume (in a day or so?) at a 99.7% confidence interval.
With that being said, I’m sure that smaller scale or faster turnaround time A/B tests are being ran at Uni’s.
And it may be quicker and more reliable with less risk than A/B testing in their setting. The most highly trafficked web tech companies can gather statistically significant feedback data about a change in moments. A/B testing a curriculum or educational practice could take a semester or more, and then the risks are higher — it would be a two-sided hypothesis test where the B group could not only do better, but could also do much worse, and it would reflect poorly on the institution if so. People are paying tens of thousands of dollars per seat per year for the best education they can get. Seeing how many items are in the shopping cart right on the “checkout” button doesn’t really reflect poorly on Amazon, but it could help Amazon increase conversion rates by .03%, which could mean millions of dollars at their scale, and they could also complete the test fairly quickly given their volume (in a day or so?) at a 99.7% confidence interval.
With that being said, I’m sure that smaller scale or faster turnaround time A/B tests are being ran at Uni’s.