This study analyzes how students’ course-level sense of social belonging
is impacted by differential teaching methods, affects their learning
experiences, and their academic outcomes in four large enrollment
Managerial Economics courses. Our analysis of survey data collected at
the end of the spring quarter as well as provided course-specific
learning assessments (e.g., quiz and exam performance and course grades)
exploits exogenous variation in mandatory vs. incentivized in-person
lecture attendance and use of lecture capture to establish a causal link
between students’ learning experiences and commonly used metrics of
academic success. The study is informed by the emerging literature on
experience effects and economic outcomes (e.g., Malmendier 2021,
Malmendier and Shen 2024) and builds on pedagogy research (e.g., Edwards
et al. 2022a, 2022b) documenting a strong recursive relation between
academic performance, retention in STEM disciplines, and course-specific
social belonging. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of
which teaching methods leverage students’ diverse backgrounds and
identities, bring them back into the classroom, and actively engage them
with the taught course content.
