Winter Break Effect in General Education CLASS Results

The Winter Break Effect is a shift in student attitudes toward more expert-like during the break between the first semester and second semester of a course. We have CLASS data from a two semester general education course that seems to demonstrate a Winter Break Effect. However, more detailed analysis of matched responses between the end of the first semester and the beginning of the second semester indicates that no significant shift in overall favorable percentage occurred between the first and second semester. We do however observe a statistically significant decrease in the overall unfavorable percentage. This shift persists throughout the second semester of the course.