| The demand by the public for a wider variety of course formats has led to complexity in determining a course's optimal delivery format as many faculty members still believe that online and accelerated courses do not offer students an equivalent experience to traditional face to face instruction. The purpose of this quantitative, comparative study was to determine if there is a relationship between the students' course experiences and course delivery format (online, traditional, accelerated ground, and accelerated online). The population for this study were students enrolled in an Introduction to Psychology course that was offered in an online, accelerated ground, accelerated online, and traditional course format, at a small, liberal arts, college in Massachusetts. A total of 73 students agreed to informed consent and completed the entire survey. This study focused on a single independent variable (course delivery format) and several dependent variables (course experience) with a focus on the relationship between those variables. Methodologically this research contributes to the field of education to provide a better understanding of students' course experiences in regards to perceptions of good teaching, clear goals, appropriate assessment, appropriate workload, and generic skills efficacy, in an online, accelerated ground, accelerated online, and traditional course format. Results of the study suggested that the traditional course delivery format was viewed as having a lower quality in regards to good teaching, clear goals and standards, and generic skills when compared to the other formats. The four course delivery formats showed no statistically significant differences when comparing the dependent variables of appropriate assessment and appropriate workload. An exploratory analysis was also conducted in regards to overall satisfaction. There was a statistically significant difference in the distribution of overall satisfaction scores among the four groups, X2(3) = 16.0; p = .001. All pairwise comparisons were made using Mann-Whitney tests with a Bonferroni-adjusted alpha level of 0.0083 to determine which groups were different than which. The results showed the distribution of overall satisfaction scores was lower in the traditional course deliver group compared to the accelerated ground (p = 0.003) course delivery group. None of the other groups were statistically significantly different than each other. Results of this study may help in the development of flexible course options that meet the needs of the 21st century student and in turn lead to better student outcomes. Future research should focus on examining students' course experiences among various course delivery formats in other disciplines and across a larger population of students. |
