Estimating the Impact of Distance Education on Student Learning Outcomes Using the ETS Major Field Test in Business

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between the proportion of coursework students complete in an online format absent traditional classroom interaction and their expected score on a standardized, content-driven achievement test, holding constant other factors expected to influence test scores, including demographic variables, major, and prior academic performance. The study's sample involved 817 undergraduate business majors at a small, specialized, private, not-for-profit U.S. institution of higher education and their performance on Educational Testing Service's Major Field Test in Business (MFT-B). Students in the sample chose course-by-course to take either a hybrid format that involved regular classroom meetings supplemented by online learning or an entirely asynchronous online course involving no face-to-face interaction. Learning outcomes, syllabi, assessments, duration and the pool of instructors were the same in both formats. This investigation was motivated by the changing role of distance education in higher education and the increasing fungibility of credits earned at a distance and those earned in a traditional, classroom-based context. The use of the MFT-B was motivated by the growing emphasis on student learning outcomes assessment and mounting demands for "accountability" in higher education. An ordinary least squares regression modeling MFT-B score as a function of proportion of credits completed at a distance, GPA, major, transfer credits, completion time, age, gender and ethnicity found proportion of study at a distance to have a strongly significant (p<.001), positive impact on expected MFT-B score. A logistic regression of likelihood of graduation as a function of those same variables found a strongly significant (p<.001) negative impact of study at a distance on retention to graduation.