COMPARING ONLINE AND TRADITIONAL LEARNING USING THE ROCK CYCLE

Online classes are becoming increasingly more common in universities, yet the validity of this teaching method, especially for online laboratory classes, is largely untested. To this end, we compared the performance of students in an online lab activity and a traditional lab activity to determine if online content delivery is as effective as the traditional counterpart.

Online social networking has been previously used to have students both present information and collaborate with their fellow students about certain basic rock characteristics. The results of this study showed high test scores and increased student confidence in the material they learned, but did not directly compare the online assignment with a traditional counterpart. In order to measure student learning in both online and traditional collaborative lab activities, we utilized two different lab sections from an introductory geoscience class. Each group completed an anonymous pre activity, post activity, and end of semester assessment that was traceable throughout the semester by assigning each student a personal identification number. These assessments consisted of short answer and multiple choice questions about the learning material.

Each group received the same directed learning materials, modified for the type of course delivery (online versus traditional). For the traditional, in-class lab section, this included an interactive project that involved collaborating with other classmates. Each student was assigned a rock from the rock cycle and had to pair themselves with classmates whom had rocks with similar attributes. In the online lab section, the students made a short video and shared it with other students. The students would then comment on their peers’ videos as a means to discuss the similarities between their rock and their classmate’s rock.

After analyzing the pre activity, post activity, and end of semester assessments, we observed an increase in average test scores following the completion of the activity in both types of formats. Overall, our results suggest that the students retained similar knowledge in both the online and traditional lecture classes. Our study shows that online labs are an effective teaching method when compared to traditional learning.