A Comparative Analysis of Student Performance in an Online vs. Face-to-Face Environmental Science Course From 2009 to 2016

A growing number of students are now opting for online classes. They find the traditional classroom modality restrictive, inflexible, and impractical. In this age of technological advancement, schools can now provide effective classroom teaching via the Web. This shift in pedagogical medium is forcing academic institutions to rethink how they want to deliver their course content. The overarching purpose of this research was to determine which teaching method proved more effective over the 8-year period. The scores of 548 students, 401 traditional students and 147 online students, in an environmental science class were used to determine which instructional modality generated better student performance. In addition to the overarching objective, we also examined score variabilities between genders and classifications to determine if teaching modality had a greater impact on specific groups. No significant difference in student performance between online and face-to-face (F2F) learners overall, with respect to gender, or with respect to class rank were found. These data demonstrate the ability to similarly translate environmental science concepts for non-STEM majors in both traditional and online platforms irrespective of gender or class rank. A potential exists for increasing the number of non-STEM majors engaged in citizen science using the flexibility of online learning to teach environmental science core concepts.