April 2001 — Features
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A Comparison Between a Distance and a Traditional Graduate Accounting Class
The recent past has seen a proliferation of distance education programs. Total enrollment in all distance education courses has been estimated at 1.6 million students (B'ettcher 2000). The increasing popularity of online courses naturally leads to a consideration of the effectiveness of these courses - particularly in comparison with on-campus courses. The purpose of this paper is to provide such a comparison for an introductory accounting MBA course.
There are numerous advantages to the student and to the institution associated with distance education (Matthews 1999). For the student, distance education provides increased access to courses with flexible scheduling and less travel. For the institution, distance education provides the ability to increase enrollment without constructing and maintaining additional buildings. Unfortunately, distance education also has increased costs. Usually, a student will experience higher tuition and fees, while the institution will experience a high cost of entry. Providing an adequate infrastructure and other support for faculty offering distance courses can also be costly.
Prior studies comparing online and on-campus courses have consistently found that the performance of online students is not significantly different from the performance of on-campus students. This is a welcome finding for the organizations and students interested in distance education. Although this study supports this common finding, it differs from prior work in that it deals with a graduate introductory accounting course, and in that it has a relatively large number of students in each of the compared sections.
There are different definitions for distance education, ranging from the correspondence course format to full-motion video. Some of the variations in between include the following scenarios: the instructor travels to a satellite campus to teach the class; the instructor teaches in the classroom and transmits a video signal to a satellite campus (or campuses); or the instructor delivers the course via e-mail, chat room, or a Web-based interface.
This course was delivered in the traditional online course format. Students were provided with a Web-based interface. The interface allowed students to engage in synchronous chats and asynchronous threaded discussion groups via a bulletin board. Students were given their own workspaces where they could exchange files with the instructor and with each other. The students could also utilize e-mail and voice (phone calls) to communicate with the instructor and with each other. Online testing was also available, but not utilized in this course. The only synchronous capability was through the chat room technology and through phone calls. The majority of communication for the course was asynchronous in nature (e-mail, voicemail messages and bulletin board postings).
A graduate level introductory accounting course should be a good candidate for distance education delivery. Typically, students are required to master ways of organizing and presenting factual material.
