Assessing Student Characteristics for Success in Online Versus Face-to-Face Environments

Abstract

Online education is pervasive in higher education today. More students are taking courses online than ever before. Institutions are encouraged to adopt virtual classrooms as the market demands access. This study examined the characteristics of students who choose to enroll in online or face-to-face courses and their eventual academic outcomes in their selected course. The purpose was to determine whether online and face-to-face students possess the same skillsets or if there are characteristics that a student should possess when choosing to enroll in an online class or program. Additionally, this study examined students’ perception of online courses versus face-to-face courses to determine if there were any differences in students’ feedback based on the type of course in which they were enrolled. The course Management Information Systems 101 (MS107) served as the focus of this study; it is a required undergraduate business course in an urban university. Typically, undergraduate sophomores or juniors take this course and are declared business majors at the university. The units for analysis consisted of students enrolled in MS107 in the fall of 2017 and spring of 2018 semesters. The online courses were conducted via WebEx, synchronously with live interaction from the professor. The face-to-face classes were conducted in the traditional environment on the university’s main campus. Data were collected from the university’s student system, student feedback forms, and the university’s New Student Questionnaire (NSQ) and concatenated to present a full picture of each student’s course outcome, demographics, and responses to the NSQ. The purpose in analyzing this information was to determine if there are behavioral, demographic, or other characteristics that might lend to better or worse performance in an online classroom. Finally, student feedback was analyzed to determine whether students have different opinions of MS107 depending on course delivery method. Results of this study indicate that from a course delivery perspective, engagement between students and faculty is a critical asset that should be developed in the online classroom environment. In the analysis of the student self-reported characteristics, many of the characteristics for success for the entire sample hold true for the characteristics of successful students in the face-to-face sections. For the online sections, however, the key predictors of success are simply previous grade point average and expectation of high averages in college, eliminating variables like self-confidence and hard working. The results of this study support prior research that states students perform better in face-to-face classrooms than online; however, this research begins to showcase what opportunities might be available for improvement in the online classroom