April 2001 — Features
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A Comparison Between a Distance and a Traditional Graduate Accounting Class
One of the issues that arises when grading distance education students is whether or not the student actually did his or her own work. Cooper (2000) suggests having the students attend the campus for a comprehensive final exam. This was not an option, as the students in the distance course hailed from around the world and the cost would be prohibitive for many. It was interesting to note that there were few complaints from the students about having to obtain proctors.
The final exam was a set of complex problems involving multiple computations and explanations of the managerial accounting portion of the course. For the on-campus class, it was a take-home exam that they were required to complete in one week. The distance students also had one week to complete the final exam.
In addition to the exams, there were three projects required for the course. In the first project, students were required to analyze the 10-K of a company from the EDGAR database provided by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). The in-class students did the exercise in teams, whereas the online students worked individually. However, the analysis required was the same. For the second project, the students read four articles on Activity-Based Costing (ABC) and/or the Theory of Constraints (TOC). The assignment was to analyze and synthesize the readings. The third project involved the construction of a capital-budgeting spreadsheet which would allow the user to change inputs (such as the amount of the investment, the cash flows, etc.) and get the correct resulting net present value (NPV).
Student Perceptions
Ryan (2000) has observed that if the students' quality perceptions and their performance in online courses are similar to those of students in class, then it can be assumed that the online class was as effective as the on-campus class.
In terms of the class as a learning experience, and for the overall course and the overall instructor, there were no differences between the classes. However, in responding to instructor availability, there was a significant difference. This finding is supportive of a common belief that interacting with the instructor and/or with other students is somewhat hampered in a distance course. Ryan (2000) observes: "Interaction with the online instructor using e-mail, telephone, or chat demands greater efficiency than open oral discussion, and therefore is more limited. This is perhaps the greatest limitation of the online delivery method. Almost all online participants felt that this was the greatest weakness of the class."
The online students communicated with the instructor almost exclusively using e-mail. On average, there were about 20 to 25 messages from the distance students per week. Interestingly, some of the in-class students frequently used e-mail to ask questions between classes also. This was in addition to fairly lively discussions and many questions during the weekly class time. On average, there were only about four to five messages from the on-campus students per week. In both cases, the e-mails were primarily concerned with the solution sets, or administrative issues. They were not used for informal conversation between instructor and student.
