Is Face-to-face Better Than Online? a Five-year Longitudinal Study of 33 Online and 25 Face-to-face Sections of Seven Different Courses
Year: 2003
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The number and diversity of online programs offered by many institutions has significantly increased over the last few years.Along with this increase have come both support and critics of the quality and effectiveness of online instruction.The purpose of this paper is to report on a five-year longitudinal study of performance and perceptions of 902 students in 33 online and 25 face-to-face sections of seven different courses taught by five different professors.Analysis of data collected for this study shows that the percentage of female students enrolled in the online curses was significantly higher than the percentage of females enrolled in traditional courses.No significant difference was found in the students' perception of the quality of the course pedagogy based on the mode of course delivery.This study supports the finding (Goldberg, 1997), based on a single course he studied, that students in two of the seven courses we studied, who had access to both face-to-face and online instruction achieved a higher level of performance.For all of our survey questions dealing with the evaluation of the course and the instructor, the online classes had a higher proportion of positive opinions than the face-to-face courses but none of them are significantly different.
Language: English
Topic: Online and Blended Learning
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2139533320