Do students learn and like online work as much as class?
Students scored about the same whether a topic was done online or in class, but most preferred discussing in person while being happy to do solo written work online.
Source
Face-to-face or face-to-screen? Undergraduates' opinions and test performance in classroom vs. online learning
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Study 1: counterbalanced within-subject comparison of two matched topics, one taught in class and one online, with a short test after each; Study 2: preference ratings and reasons from a new cohort
- N
- N=67 · 67 third-year psychology students in Study 1 (Group 1 n = 27, Group 2 n = 40); 37 different students in Study 2
- Population
- Third-year undergraduate psychology students at an Australian university
- Outcome
- Short-answer test marks per modality; 1-5 preference ratings for in-class vs online; thematic analysis of reasons
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
In Study 1, 67 psychology undergraduates studied two matched child-development topics: one through in-class exercises and discussion, the other through an online discussion board a week later, with the topic order swapped between two groups. After each, they sat a short test on that topic and rated whether they preferred class or online, and explained why. Study 2 asked 37 new students to rate separately whether they preferred written activities and discussions in class or online.
What they found
Test marks did not differ by modality or topic, and a student's preferred modality was unrelated to their marks. In Study 1, 47 students preferred in-class work versus 20 who preferred online or didn't mind; the main reasons were more engagement and immediate feedback in class, and convenience online. In Study 2, preferences split by task: written activities averaged 3.54 on the 5-point scale (leaning online) while discussions averaged 1.62 (strongly in class).
The limits
What it doesn't show
Every student did the face-to-face session first and the online one second, so modality is tangled up with week order and practice effects. The online test could be taken at home, possibly with internet access, while the class test could not. Samples were modest, all were advanced psychology students at one university, and the online discussion was slow and asynchronous, so a real-time online format might produce different preferences. A null difference in marks on one short test does not prove the two modes are equivalent for deeper or longer-term learning.
Key terms
- Blended learning
- A course that mixes face-to-face teaching with some online activities rather than being entirely one or the other.
- Within-subject design
- Each participant experiences every condition, so they act as their own comparison and individual differences are controlled.
- Counterbalancing
- Swapping which topic goes with which condition across groups so that topic difficulty is not confused with the condition.
- Asynchronous discussion
- Online discussion where people post at different times rather than talking in real time.
- Thematic analysis
- A qualitative method that codes free-text answers and groups them into recurring themes.
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Quiz yourself
What design did Study 1 use to compare modalities?
Common questions
Does this mean online learning is just as good as classroom learning?
Only for this kind of short test after one week's activity. Marks were similar, but the study was small and did not test deeper or long-term learning.
If students preferred class, did they do better in class?
No. Preference was not related to marks, suggesting teachers can pick a mode for teaching reasons without disadvantaging students who dislike it.
Why did students dislike online discussion?
They missed the sense of engagement and fast back-and-forth; the online board stayed open for days, so replies could take hours or longer.
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