Lalitha Balachandran, Megan B. McNamara, Herbert K. H. Lee, & Michael Tassio
Abstract
Most research into the efficacy of online courses has focused on the difference in final grade outcomes between students who take a course online and those who take the same course in a face-to-face setting. In this paper, we consider the broader question of how participation in an online version of a prerequisite in a multi-course sequence (“upstream” courses) impacts students’ grade outcomes in postrequisite (“downstream”) courses, regardless of downstream modality.
We undertook this project using data gathered between 2019 and 2022, including the years surrounding a global historical event — the COVID-19 pandemic — that prompted an unprecedented increase in institutional commitment to online education necessitated by the exigencies of public health restrictions on in-person learning. To ensure a basic level of pedagogical quality, we included in our data set only courses that were purposefully designed with support from our institution’s Teaching and Learning Center staff.
We found that the effect of upstream online course modality on downstream course outcomes is largely insignificant and that, where significant findings do exist, they generally show a slight advantage for students who took the online or hybrid version of an upstream course. We conclude that purposefully designed online courses can play a critical role in producing more equitable educational outcomes in terms of student success and in expanding access to higher education to students who might not otherwise be able to pursue it.