Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, almost all universities and colleges have been considering whether they should offer online education in addition to physical lectures. Sufficient experience has now been gained with both forms to know the pros and cons. However, one aspect had not yet been investigated: whether the form of education influences study results. Researcher Koen van den Oever of Tilburg University looked into this together with Stephanie Koornneef of uu77.
They closely examined the Organisation and Environment course in the bachelor's programme in Business Administration at uu77. Students had a choice: attend the lecture at the university, watch it via livestream and/or watch a recording of the lecture. The method of attending the lecture appeared to have no effect on the quality of the education and the study results. All students achieved comparable results.
Design of the study
Koen van den Oever explains the design of the study: ‘During the exam, students were given three exam questions per lecture. They had indicated beforehand how they had followed each lecture: via the live stream, physically in the lecture hall or by watching the web lecture afterwards. This gave us a unique opportunity to investigate whether the method of attendance influenced their understanding of the material. Because students sometimes physically attended one lecture and followed another lecture via live stream, we could compare which method worked best for each student. This variation within individuals made our analysis even more valuable.
Having a choice appears to be an important factor; it makes education more accessible, for example, to students with a physical disability or students who have to travel a long way, especially in the current housing crisis. According to the researchers, another factor that played a role was the fact that the teachers actively involved the online students in the lecture by using tools such as a chat box and an online quiz.
Yet Stephanie Koornneef also recognises that there are reasons to visit the campus. ‘The university is pre-eminently a place for meeting and interacting – an environment where knowledge develops and spreads and friendships for life are formed. Studying (and being a student!) involves much more than just attending lectures. There is therefore definite value in being physically present at the university. Physical presence also offers opportunities to promote social cohesion, both between students and between students and staff. At the same time, we do not believe that social cohesion is automatically created by simply offering physical lectures. Yes, it may increase attendance in lecture halls, but not all students are able or willing to attend classes in person.
Invest in flexible education
The researchers advise universities to invest in flexible education. Koornneef: ‘Universities and society are placing increasingly higher demands on recent graduates. A degree alone is often no longer enough. Ideally, students will have already gained relevant work experience during their studies (for example through internships), spent time abroad, gained administrative experience and developed some degree of entrepreneurship. All this is in addition to having a part-time job to pay for their studies and living expenses, and sometimes also having to travel long distances to college as a result of the housing crisis.
'As teachers, policymakers and universities, we must therefore think carefully about how we can organise education in such a way that students are actually given the space to meet these expectations. Flexible education can play an important role in this. Consider, for example, offering live streams or hybrid lectures, which can not only benefit students, but also offer practical advantages for universities, such as dealing more efficiently with shortages of classrooms. With this study, we therefore hope to initiate a discussion about the way in which education is offered. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, many innovative forms of education have been abandoned, even though these are precisely the opportunities that could make education more future-proof and inclusive.