Blended-Learning in a Graduate Accounting Course: Student Satisfaction and Course Design Issues

This paper reports student perceptions from a traditional classroom section and a blended-learning section of an MBA accounting course. Blended learning course delivery offers an attractive mix between traditional classroom and purely online delivery by including a limited number of in-class meetings during a semester. The results suggest that tradeoffs continue to exist, but that blended learning may close some gaps between traditional and purely online delivery. For instance, blended-learning students had more positive group work experiences and had more positive perceptions of the instructor’s feedback and responsiveness to questions outside of class. However, blended-learning still falls short in terms of sufficiency of interaction. Importantly, blended-learning students value having some in-class time and tend to believe that the benefits of having a few class meetings outweigh the costs in terms of time and energy. The study yields important initial information regarding the appropriate number of class meetings to include in a blended-learning course.