May 2002 — Features
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
Predictors of Performance in the Virtual Classroom
Demographic and Educational Predictors
It may come as a surprise, but basic demographic characteristics such as gender and age are not reliable predictors of cyber-student performance (Wang and Newlin 2000). While there may be a perception that male teen-agers might have a technological advantage, research d'es not show systematic differences in performance as a function of gender and age for the college population. Indeed, we are not aware of any research demonstrating that there are reliable demographic predictors of performance among college students who choose to take online courses.
However, the educational backgrounds of cyber-students can serve as early warning indicators for failure or success in the virtual classroom. For instance, Osborn (2001) has shown that the number of previous distance learning courses taken by students reliably discriminates between students who drop out compared to those who remain in either Web-based or videoconferencing courses. This is attributed to students' prior experiences with distance learning courses, which increase their familiarity with the technological demands of the virtual classroom. Just as importantly, these students have developed confidence in their ability to take advantage of the learning opportunities available to them in these types of learning environments. Osborn also found that students who remain in distance learning courses take a greater number of college courses and have higher college GPAs compared to those students who drop out of these courses.
Psychological Predictors
Recently, there have been investigations as to whether learner characteristics are correlated with performance in the virtual classroom. Some of the research has investigated characteristics that may be conceptualized as 'global' traits or dimensions, such as learning style, sensory preference, hemisphericity/brain dominance and locus of control (Ehrman 1990). Global traits refer to characteristics that are relatively enduring and stable across time and various learning environments (i.e., cross-situational). However, as far as predicting cyber-student success, research on these global characteristics has yielded very little in the way of definitive results.
The safest conclusion that can be reached is that only one global trait, locus of control, is moderately correlated with performance in the virtual classroom. Specifically, students with an internal locus of control (e.g., 'The success I have is largely a matter of my own doing') are more likely to succeed in an online class than students with an external locus of control (e.g., 'The success I have is largely a matter of chance'). This is because learners with an internal locus of control leave little to chance or fate, but attempt to manage their activities in a thoughtful manner.
In contrast to the research on global traits, which has searched for cross-situational consistency, investigations on 'situation-specific' (i.e., course-specific) learner characteristics have yielded much stronger predictors of cyber-student performance. Situation-specific characteristics refer to those behaviors and beliefs that are not generalized, but are associated with a particular activity or environment. One such concept is self-efficacy, which refers to an individual's belief that they can perform a specific behavior to attain a desired goal (Bandura 1997). It is situation specific because one can have high self-efficacy about accomplishing one task, but low self-efficacy about accomplishing another.
