TY - JOUR
T1 - Students in fully online programs report more positive attitudes toward science than students in traditional, in-person programs
AU - Perera, Viranga
AU - Mead, Chris
AU - Buxner, Sanlyn
AU - Lopatto, David
AU - Horodyskyj, Lev
AU - Semken, Steven
AU - Anbar, Ariel
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions. We also thank the NASA Astrobiology Institute, the National Science Foundation (TUES grant number 1225741), and ASU Online for funding the development of Habitable Worlds. This work is contribution #2 from ASU’s Center for Education Through Exploration.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 V. Perera et al.
PY - 2017/12/1
Y1 - 2017/12/1
N2 - Following the growth of online, higher-education courses, academic institutions are now offering fully online degree programs. Yet it is not clear how students who enroll in fully online degree programs are similar to those students who enroll in in-person (“traditional”) degree programs. Because previous work has shown students’ attitudes toward science can affect their performance in a course, it is valuable to ask how attitudes toward science differ between these two populations. We studied students who completed a fully online astrobiology course. In an analysis of 451 student responses to the Classroom Undergraduate Research Experience survey, we found online program students began the course with a higher scientific sophistication and a higher sense of personal value of science than those in traditional programs. Precourse attitudes also showed some predictive power of course grades among online students, but not for traditional students. Given established relationships between feelings of personal value, intrinsic motivation, and, in turn, traits such as persistence, our results suggest that open-ended or exploration-based learning may be more engaging to online program students due to their pre-existing attitudes. The converse may also be true, that certain pre-existing attitudes among online program students are more detrimental than they are for traditional program students.
AB - Following the growth of online, higher-education courses, academic institutions are now offering fully online degree programs. Yet it is not clear how students who enroll in fully online degree programs are similar to those students who enroll in in-person (“traditional”) degree programs. Because previous work has shown students’ attitudes toward science can affect their performance in a course, it is valuable to ask how attitudes toward science differ between these two populations. We studied students who completed a fully online astrobiology course. In an analysis of 451 student responses to the Classroom Undergraduate Research Experience survey, we found online program students began the course with a higher scientific sophistication and a higher sense of personal value of science than those in traditional programs. Precourse attitudes also showed some predictive power of course grades among online students, but not for traditional students. Given established relationships between feelings of personal value, intrinsic motivation, and, in turn, traits such as persistence, our results suggest that open-ended or exploration-based learning may be more engaging to online program students due to their pre-existing attitudes. The converse may also be true, that certain pre-existing attitudes among online program students are more detrimental than they are for traditional program students.
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U2 - 10.1187/cbe.16-11-0316
DO - 10.1187/cbe.16-11-0316
M3 - Article
C2 - 29146666
AN - SCOPUS:85035030015
SN - 1931-7913
VL - 16
JO - CBE life sciences education
JF - CBE life sciences education
IS - 4
M1 - ar60
ER -