Comment on Chen and Lin 'Does Downloading Power-Point Slides before the Lecture Lead to Better Student Achievement?'

Abstract

Chen and Lin (2008) is an interesting attempt to measure the effect of students having access to PowerPoint slides before a lecture. They argue that such access leads to better learning outcomes as measured by higher exam marks. While their empirical results shed some light on students' use of PowerPoint slides, I argue that they have not succeeded in isolating the treatment effect and the correlations cannot be interpreted as causal.