Online education has become more and more prevalent among universities all over the world, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. An important question to ask is whether this non-traditional teaching modality is effective. The current study is unique in its focus on a department instead of a whole university or a single class or two. We compared student performance in psychology classes in three teaching modalities: in-person, hybrid and online courses between 2015 and 2019. Stringent inclusion criteria were used to reduce the large dataset. Results from statistical analyses are presented and discussed to answer the four research questions. Overall, we find significant differences among the three teaching modes, with hybrid outperforming in person and online when measuring students’ performance indicated by the course grades. However, this impact is more nuanced depending on the course level. Upper-level courses (3,000–4,000 level) benefit more from in-person and hybrid mode than online, whereas the introductory course (1,000 level) benefits more from hybrid mode than in person or online. The most significant difference is in the 2,000-level courses, primarily the research methods course, where online students’ course grades are notably trailing behind in-person or hybrid courses. Further, consistent with findings from other researchers, students’ previous grade point average has the strongest association with their course grades in all teaching modalities. These findings have important implications for different academic departments in that they may want to consider these results when scheduling classes to serve student needs best and achieve the best student success outcome.
Zhan et al. (Tue,) studied this question.