Original Discipline: Introductory Psychology
The Student Struggle
Students struggle to distinguish correlation from causation. They may accept a causal claim without recognizing alternative explanations or identifying what additional evidence would be necessary.
Intended Learning Outcome
Students will be able to evaluate causal claims, distinguish correlation from causation, and identify evidence needed to support a conclusion.
Thinking Students Practice
Judgment
Thinking Under Uncertainty
Intellectual Humility
The Learning Activity
Students examine a short, fictional news-style story claiming that drinking coffee improves exam scores. The story includes an apparent relationship between coffee consumption and student performance but does not establish that coffee caused the improvement.
Working individually or in small groups, students consider:
What does the evidence actually show?
What information is missing?
What alternative explanations might account for the relationship?
What additional evidence would make the causal claim more convincing?
Try This With Your Students
Does Drinking Coffee Improve Exam Scores?
The Scenario
A college newspaper publishes an article with the headline:
"Study Finds That Drinking Coffee Leads to Higher Exam Scores."
The article describes a survey of 200 college students. Students who reported drinking at least two cups of coffee per day had an average exam score of 84%, while students who drank little or no coffee had an average score of 76%.
The article concludes that drinking coffee improves academic performance and suggests that students should increase their coffee consumption before exams.
However, the researchers did not assign students to drink coffee or control for differences in their study habits, sleep, course difficulty, or other factors.
Your Challenge
Working individually or in a small group, evaluate the newspaper's conclusion.
Identify the claim. What is the article suggesting about coffee consumption and exam performance?
Examine the evidence. What does the study actually tell us? Does it establish that drinking coffee causes higher exam scores?
Identify missing information. What additional information would help you evaluate the claim?
Consider alternative explanations. Identify at least two other factors that might explain the difference in exam scores.
Make a judgment. Do you believe the newspaper's headline is justified? Explain your reasoning.
Propose an improvement. How could researchers design a study that would provide stronger evidence about whether coffee consumption affects exam performance?
Share Your Thinking
Prepare a brief explanation of your group's conclusions. Be ready to discuss which evidence influenced your judgment, what remains uncertain, and what additional information you would need before accepting the claim.
Remember: Your goal is not simply to decide whether coffee improves exam scores. Your goal is to evaluate whether the available evidence supports that conclusion.
Making Student Thinking Visible
Students explain whether the evidence supports the headline, identify at least two plausible alternative explanations, and propose one way to investigate the relationship further.
The instructor evaluates the quality of their reasoning, not merely whether they correctly identify the distinction between correlation and causation.
Adapt This Scenario
The underlying instructional approach is to present students with a plausible claim and ask them to investigate whether the evidence justifies the conclusion.
In healthcare, this could involve a claim about treatment effectiveness. In business, students might evaluate whether a marketing campaign caused increased sales. In information technology, students might investigate whether a system change actually improved performance.
Faculty can replace the original claim while preserving the requirement that students examine evidence, consider alternatives, and justify their conclusions.
Original AI Prompt
Generate a short news-style scenario where a study claims that drinking coffee improves exam scores. Include details that make it unclear whether the relationship is causal. Students should identify what evidence is missing and explain why the claim may be misleading. This is for an introductory college course and should be usable as a small-group discussion prompt.