FICHE-LECTURE

"The Impact of Repote-Site Group Size on Student Satisfaction and Relative Performance in Interactive Telecourses"

by Paul M. Biner, Kimberly D. Welsh, Natalie M. Barone, Marcia Summers and Raymond S. Dean
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION, Vol 11, p.23-33, 1997

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Contents Purpose of the study Short description Expectations - Predictions Practical implications - Method used Theoretical implications - Arguments Results Comments on the study

Purpose of the study

The primary goal was to determine whether and to what extend the number of individuals attending telecourse class sessions (site size) at a given remote site predicts a student's:

• satisfaction with facets of the course
• overall course satisfaction and
• motivation.

Short description

The results of this research showed that students attending class sessions with fewer students reported being more satisfied with the courses and they performed at exceeding levels of their previous academic performance than students attending sessions with more students. Also, they perform as well as, and in some cases better than, their traditionally taught counterparts.

Expectations - Predictions

It was expected that site size would affect facet and overall satisfaction with the telecourses, as well as relative performance. But no specific predictions were made, regarding the direction of the anticipated effects.

Practical implications - Method used

Subjects. The research involved 288 undergraduate college students (259 of them female) in 17 live interactive telecourses at 68 remote sites in the United States.

Telecourses. The courses spanned a wide and diverse array of disciplines (accounting, biology, economics, business, psychology, history, etc)

Sites. The site sizes ranged from 1 to 33 students.

Attitudinal Assessment Instrument. It was administered to the students the Telecourse Evaluation Questionnaire (TEQ), a widely-used telecourse attitudinal assessment instrument with sound psychometric properties. TEQ lists various facets of of telecourses and asks students to rate each on a five-point Likert-type scale (from Very poor to Very good). They also added a question to assess student's overall satisfaction.

Performance assessment. "Relative performance" was decided to be calculated as the final grade minus prior college GPA (Grade Point Averages). Like that, they were able to get information not only on the student's motivation but also on the student's effort and persistence.

Procedure. During a class session held the final 4 weeks of the semester.

Theoretical implications - Arguments

1. There was the possibility that confounding variables, rather than the specified predictor variables, are responsible for the reported effects i.e., course enrollment that might have affected negatively the outcome measures. But this is not the case, because it has taken into consideration and studied carefully.
2. Having fewer students at a site affords more control over the equipment thereby leading to higher technology satisfaction which is partly true.
3. Generilizability of the results is based on the following facts:
   • large and representative sample of students,
   • the study was conducted at an institution similar in size to many institutions worldwide and
   • the courses varied considerably in course content.
4. Some educators argued that telecourses might cause students to feel uninvolved and isolated, resulting in low satisfaction and motivation. On the contrary, the most satisfied students found to be the ones that attended the courses alone at home !

Results

The results showed that:

• the satisfaction factor scores of the TEQ were significantly negatively related to site size.
• the most satisfied telecourse students were found at the sites with the fewest students.
• a significant negative relationship was found such that students attending class sessions with fewer other students were more likely to exhibit a level of telecourse performance that exceeded their prior level of academic performance.

Comments on the study

The study is very interesting and enlightening. I appreciate that they took into consideration the student's motivation (as the relative performance) and not simply the performance during the course that might have lead to wrong assumptions.

Of course, I think that people that have chosen a specific telecourse had some reasons to do that instead of doing it the classical way. I think that's the reason that the best performances found in students that attended the course alone at home.

I have to admit, as I am also a student in a distance course that there is a feeling of isolation sometimes...