Abstract:
This study was designed to examine the online activity of students (n=72 over three semesters) enrolled in a distance education equine science course. The tracking function of Vista 4.0 (Vista Blackboard) provided information about the students' activities online. Students were categorized based on if they were successful in the course (A, B grade, n=55), unsuccessful (C or D grade, n = 9 students) or those who failed or did not complete the course (n = 8 total). Analysis of variance was used to determine if activity differed across the categories and correlation analysis was used to determine if online activity was related to the students' final grade. There were significant positive relationships between the time spent online, number of online sessions and the number of files opened, with the student's final grade. Further, students who were successful in the course were more active online, having significantly more online sessions than those who failed (P < 0.05) and there was a tendency for successful students to spend more time online than those who were unsuccessful (P < 0.1). These results show that online activity can affect the final outcome in a distance education course and therefore faculty should encourage student engagement in their courses and monitor student activity to gauge these efforts.
Keywords:
online activity, equine science, performance in distance learning
 Pratt_March 2011 NACTA JOURNAL-4.pdf | [ ] | 120 kB |
