This study reports the results of a survey exploring the factors that motivate students in a face to face course, considering the components of the MUSIC model of academic motivation.
The online course covers the same content as the face to face course and takes around six to eight hours to complete.
Guardian Masterclasses is an international programme of face-to-face courses across film, food and drink, gardening, music, photography, technology, writing and other disciplines.
A large majority — about three million — were simultaneously enrolled in face-to-face courses, belying the popular notion that most online students live far from campuses, said Jeff Seaman, co-director of the survey.
In a five-year-long study of over fifty thousand students taking both online and face-to-face courses, researchers at Troy University found that online classes had higher failure rates than traditional classroom courses.
The online course, which begins every February, is in addition to three other established face-to-face courses that the organisation runs, which have attracted more than 2,000 students since 1990.
When Di Xu, an economist at Columbia University's Teachers College, analyzed data from more than forty thousand students who had enrolled in online courses at thirty-four colleges throughout Washington state, she found that, relative to face-to-face courses, online students earned lower grades and were less persistent.
Table 1 illustrates the overall success rates in blended, online and face-to-face courses, while also reporting their variability across minority and non-minority demographics.
Once again, the blended modality is competitive and in some cases results in lower overall withdrawal rates than either fully online or face-to-face courses.
There was also a large demand for such systems in face-to-face courses, where it was felt that they would support greater flexibility in assessment methods.
