Evaluation by York U. Centre for Study of Computers in Education Finds Majority of Students Satisfied with Internet Courses;
GRADES AS GOOD AS IN-CLASS COURSES, HIGHER THAN CORRESPONDENCE

TORONTO, July 9, 1999 -- A York University survey of students taking courses on the Internet shows that Internet courses yield better grades than traditional correspondence courses and achieve as good or better results as in-class lectures.

"When you teach a lecture theatre of 500 students, only two may come up to talk to you, but in an internet course, everyone will e-mail you," said Prof. Suzanne MacDonald, Associate Dean of Atkinson College, where the survey was done. She said it is up to individual faculty members whether they want to teach this way. "But I think more people might be convinced after reading this study," she added.

Professor Ron Owston, co-author of the study with Senior Research Associate Herb Wideman at York's Centre for the Study of Computers in Education, said the immediacy and interactivity of studying on-line may motivate students more.

Their survey was commissioned by the office of the Vice President (Academic Affairs) to find out what students thought of the Internet courses they were taking at Atkinson and what improvements -- technical and otherwise -- could be made. It compared student grades in the three modes of instruction in 14 courses. Grades for 1,099 students in Internet-based courses held between fall 1996 and fall 1998 were compared to grades for students in the same courses offered either in correspondence (2,318 students), or in-class (2,467 students), or both, with the following results:

No significant difference was found in the grades of Internet and in-class students, but both of those groups scored significantly higher grades than their counterparts in correspondence courses.

When failing marks were eliminated from the data, Internet students achieved significantly higher grades than in-class students, and the difference in grades between correspondence and internet students was the equivalent of moving from a C plus to a B minus. Owston said it was appropriate to eliminate the failing grades from the study since many of those were not earned grades but simply students who had dropped out before the final exam.

The 1,099 students taking courses on the Internet were asked to evaluate their experiences, with the following results:

73 per cent of the students surveyed said they would recommend the course to their friends; 68 per cent said they were sufficiently stimulated to take further courses in the discipline.

Students in some courses noted technical difficulties, ineffective use of online discussion rooms, and lack of sufficient interaction online with course directors and teaching assistants. Several students objected to the surcharge for an online course, saying they saw no legitimate reason why it should cost more than a regular course since many of the physical resources used in regular classes were not being used.

MacDonald said Atkinson College has already implemented the students' recommendations for improvement. "We have eliminated the technical problems and ironed-out the bugs," she said, adding that instructors' wages for distance learning are now on par with in-class instruction so there is no longer a disincentive to professors teaching on the Internet. She said the course fees are the same in all modes of instruction, and any additional fees for Internet access and software are equivalent to what a student might pay for course materials in class.

About 30 percent of students enrolled at Atkinson are in distance education courses offered through correspondence or the Internet, but 98 per cent of those live in the greater Toronto area, so they cannot really be classified as distance learners. MacDonald said the College, which now offers more courses on the Internet than in correspondence, has been impressed by the sheer volume of students accessing their web site.

"Our mandate is to be flexible and to serve the needs of part-time students," she said, adding that Internet courses guarantee that students will interact with the material and the instructor. "A much broader range of students are now studying on the Web. When we first started offering Internet courses in 1996, the students were mostly male. Now they are mostly female, which mirrors the in-class ratio."

The course evaluations in the survey are based on a 30 per cent rate of response to the questionnaire. "If students were unhappy with the course, I expect more of them would have submitted evaluations," said Owston. On-line course evaluations were more optional, he noted, as opposed to the usual practice of students submitting their evaluations to instructors before leaving the exam room. (Given the low number of respondents, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the overall class size, inferential statistical comparisons between classes were not considered appropriate. Instead, the data were aggregated across classes so that a more general analysis of students' responses to online courses could be conducted.)

Senior Research Associate Herb Wideman said it is crucial to monitor and assess the impact of new modes of course delivery on student performance. "There is a tremendous push at universities across North America to get courses on line in the competition for students. At York, we feel it's important that we evaluate this new mode of learning to determine its impact on students," he said.

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For more information, please contact:

Prof. Suzanne MacDonald
Associate Dean, Atkinson College
York University
(416) 736-5220
email: suzmac@yorku.ca

Herbert Wideman
Centre for the Study of Computers in Education
York University
(416) 736-5019, or (416) 769-8006
email: herb@edu.yorku.ca

Susan Bigelow
Media Relations Officer
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22091
email: sbigelow@yorku.ca
YU/078/99