Comparing Students Performance in Online versus Face-to-Face Courses in Computer Literacy Courses

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThis paper compares student performance in online courses versus on campus (called here Face-to-Face or F2F) courses. Students and faculty alike often express opinion that students' performance in online courses is less than what they perform in regular classes. Numerous reasons have been cited for this opinion. This paper is to investigate these claims in light of the increasing offering of online courses and the advances of technology in delivering such courses. The paper focuses on a course in computer literacy and uses a case study for a faculty that taught sections of both delivery methods (online and F2F) in one semester, thus the comparison of student performance between both delivery methods was made possible.Keywords: Teaching online versus face-to-face, Performance in online courses, Online courses in computer literacy, online performance in computer literacy coursesINTRODUCTIONOnline teaching and online learning are here to stay and to increase (Anthony, 2012; Parkhurst et al., 2008; Harrell, 2008). This assertion is widely accepted in academia in these days. Despite these accepted assertions about online education, this was hardly the case a few years ago. Many academies doubted the feasibility of offering online courses and questioned the value of continuing offering such courses. Technological advances helped overcoming some of the obstacles mentioned by doubters of online education and thus we have seen the increasing number of online courses.Despite the technological advances in online education, there is still some doubt about the performance of students in online courses as compared to face to face (F2F) courses. Some advocate that students in F2F courses perform better than online courses (Harrell, 2008; Mechana & Kekele, 2014). They cite different reasons for such better performance in F2F courses. Among the reasons cited for better performance in F2F courses are the direct connection with the instructor, the classroom setting, the dialogue and other factors that are available in F2F courses and none available in online courses.This paper is to compare performance of students enrolled in computer literacy courses in online versus F2F courses. It uses course grades from students who took the course online versus students who took the course in F2F setting and will draw a conclusion based on this comparison.The remainder of this study is divided into the following sections:- First, it defines the problem that it tried to tackle and establishes the hypothesis. It also explains the limitations of this study- Second, it provides literature review in terms online education- Third, it explains about the case of this study and the procedures followed for data collection- Fourth, it analyzes the data collection and gives insight into the analysis- Fifth, it provides conclusion and suggestions for future studiesThe ProblemThe problem that this paper is trying to address is the issue of whether performance of students in computer literacy course in F2F courses is better than performance of students taking the same course in online stetting. A hypothesis is established to assess the correctness of this problem or not. Also, some limitations are cited for this study.The HypothesisBased on the problem description listed above, the problem that this paper is addressing can be stated in terms of hypothetical settings, both in terms of null hypothesis (H0) and alternative hypothesis (H1). The following is a statement of both hypotheses:H0: Students enrolled in F2F courses perform better than students enrolled in online coursesH1: Students enrolled in F2F courses do not necessarily perform better than students enrolled in online coursesStudy LimitationsThree notable limitations are faced in this study:- The data collected are based on one semester, thus the challenge is to generalize the results based on one semester data- The performance measurement is based on the final grade for the course- Other factors like student background or prior experience with online courses were not considered in this paperLITERATURE RIVEWMost literatures agree that online education is here to stay. …