Does half the classroom time hurt flexible learners?
A flexible blended business programme with about half the on-site time showed essentially equivalent exam performance to part-time peers.
Source
Learning effectiveness of a flexible learning study programme in a blended learning design: why are some courses more effective than others?
Study at a glance
- Design
- Other — Comparison of FLEX blended vs part-time exam results across many courses
- N
- N=14460 · 2,822 FLEX and 11,638 part-time exams across 133 courses (2015–2019)
- Population
- Business Bachelor's students in FLEX blended vs part-time programmes
- Outcome
- Exam performance equivalence despite ~51% less face-to-face time
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Inspect source passages
Does half the classroom time hurt flexible learners?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
FLEX face-to-face classes reduced by approximately 51%
face-to-face classes for FLEX were reduced by approximately half (51%) compared with the part-time programme and replaced with a virtual self-study phase.
Significant difference in only 24 of 133 courses
indicated a significant difference in only 24 of the 133 courses; FLEX students showed significantly higher exam scores in 10 courses and PT students in 14 courses.
What they did
Researchers evaluated a FLEX blended Bachelor's format that cut face-to-face time by roughly half versus a part-time programme. They compared thousands of exam results across more than a hundred courses between 2015 and 2019 and examined course evaluations and design factors.
What they found
The overall effect size for FLEX versus part-time was close to zero despite the large reduction in classroom time. Significant exam differences appeared in only a minority of courses, sometimes favoring FLEX and sometimes part-time.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Equivalence on exams is not proof of identical soft-skill or long-term career outcomes. The study is situated in one Swiss business programme and self-selection into FLEX may differ from random assignment.
Key terms
- Flexible learning (FLEX)
- A blended programme format designed so students can combine study with work or family by reducing on-site class time.
- Blended learning
- Instruction that mixes face-to-face sessions with online or self-study phases.
- Learning effectiveness
- Here, primarily comparative exam performance and related course outcomes across formats.
- Part-time (PT) programme
- The conventional reduced-load on-site pathway used as the comparison format.
- Effect size
- A statistic summarising how large a difference between groups is, beyond mere significance.
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Quiz yourself
About how much on-site time did FLEX remove versus PT?
Common questions
How much classroom time did FLEX cut?
About 51% compared with the part-time programme.
Were overall exam differences large?
No—the estimated effect size was close to zero.
How many courses were compared?
133 courses between 2015 and 2019.
When did the first FLEX cohort graduate?
2019.
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