Abstract:
The College of Agricultural and Life Sciences offers several baccalaureate degree programs outside of its main campus in Gainesville using a combination of live and distance delivery. The primary means of distance delivery has been interactive videoconferencing (IVC), where a live class is delivered synchronously to one or more remote sites. Instructors were concerned that scores on student evaluations were lower at remote than live sites, although only anecdotal information was available to support this concern. This study compared student evaluation scores between live and remote sites in a sample of 22 courses offered between summer 2005 and spring 2008. Live section scores were compared to scores from all remote sections combined using a Wilcoxan Signed Rank test on the differences between Likert scale scores (1=poor, 5=excellent) on an 11-question student evaluation. Results showed that live section scores were higher than the remote sections 64-86% of the time, depending on the question, and for 10 of 11 questions the differences were statistically significant (P<.05). This included the overall ratings of the instructor and the course, which are used to document teaching performance in faculty evaluations. Differences between scores for live and remote sections ranged from 0.18 to 0.47, depending on the question. The data suggest that students receiving instruction at remote sites via IVC are less satisfied than students at live sites, supporting the concerns of faculty. However, remote site scores were at most 0.15 points below typical college means, and live site scores were above college means, suggesting that IVC courses are rated satisfactorily relative to other courses in the College.
Keywords:
interactive videoconferencing, student evaluation scores
 Rieger_March 2011 NACTA JOURNAL-3.pdf | [ ] | 106 kB |
