Paul D. Allison, Chair
Jacob Cytryn
Irma Elo
Robert Perelman
D. Kent Peterman
Ingrid Waldron

Comments should be directed to Paul Allison, allison@soc.upenn.edu

The Pilot Curriculum is a long-range experiment in the College of Arts and Sciences, designed to test an alternative to the College's current general education curriculum. Beginning with the class of 2004, a subset of students in the Pilot Curriculum were not required to meet the standard College degree requirements, but instead fulfilled an alternative set of requirements characterized by (1) a more concentrated and more compact set of general education requirements (four interdisciplinary courses instead of the ten-course General Requirement), (2) a corresponding increase in the number of free electives, (3) an emphasis on planning with an academic advisor (including development of an Academic Plan during the sophomore year), and (4) a required research experience, normally in the context of the student's major.

The Pilot Curriculum was implemented as a true, randomized experiment. Each year, beginning with the class of 2004, approximately 200 students were randomly selected for admission to the Pilot Curriculum from the pool of pre-freshmen applicants for the program, and the remaining applicants (ranging from 74 to 208) were designated as applicant non-Pilot.

The Evaluation Committee has obtained data through multiple methods, including interviews and meetings with faculty and advisers, focus groups of students, web-based surveys of students, and analyses of student records, and course evaluations. This interim report is not intended to make definitive conclusions because we have only partial data even for the class of 2004, because we plan to replicate our results for the class of 2005, and because we are soliciting suggestions for additional questions and analyses before preparing our final report.

Faculty instructors of Pilot General Requirement courses have generally expressed enthusiasm for these courses. In contrast, student ratings of these courses on multiple dimensions are very similar to ratings for the regular General Requirement courses.

Our evidence suggests only very limited success in the goal of improved advising for students in the Pilot Curriculum.

Few differences in course choices were found in comparisons between Pilot and non-Pilot students in analyses of data from transcripts and students' self-reports. The Pilot students did report more research experience, but no significant differences were found by Pilot status in the proportion of students who were earning double majors, dual degrees, sub-matriculation masters, or minors, and no significant differences were found in measures of study abroad, foreign language learning, and several additional learning experiences. Evaluation of the research experience of Pilot students is on-going among second semester seniors of the class of 2004.

Analyses of student records showed no significant difference between Pilot and non-Pilot students in the average number of science courses taken, and this lack of difference held both for students who were science majors and for those who were not science majors. Nevertheless, among non-science majors, Pilot students were significantly more likely than non-Pilot students to have taken only one science course and to have taken no mathematics or statistics courses. However, it should be noted that, among seniors, Pilot students were not more likely than non-Pilot students to have low scores on the scientific and quantitative literacy test we developed. There also were no differences in mean scores for the scientific and quantitative literacy test or for a scale that measured interest in science.

There were no significant differences by Pilot status in students' ratings of their “entire educational experience at Penn” or in their ratings of the contribution of a Penn education to none of ten intellectual abilities assessed. However, Pilot students did give somewhat more favorable ratings of the contribution of their Penn education to the “ability to learn on your own, pursue ideas, and find information you need”.

In summary, despite substantial differences between the requirements of the Pilot Curriculum and the regular curriculum, and despite our extensive evaluation of multiple sources of information on outcomes, we have found little difference in outcomes for Pilot vs. non-Pilot students.