Student performance under asynchronous and synchronous methods in distance education: A quasi-field experiment

DEMİRTAŞ B. K., TÜRK U.

INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF ECONOMICS EDUCATION, cilt.41, 2022 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 41
  • Basım Tarihi: 2022
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.iree.2022.100244
  • Dergi Adı: INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF ECONOMICS EDUCATION
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, IBZ Online, EconLit
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Distance education, Synchronous and asynchronous methods, Student performance, Higher education, Quasi-field experiments, ONLINE
  • Abdullah Gül Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This study examines student performance under asynchronous and synchronous methods in a microeconomics course during COVID-19 pandemic. We conduct a quasi-field experiment in a state university in Turkey. In the experiment, students were divided into synchronous and asynchronous groups and were taught the same weekly material of microeconomics by the methods respective to their group. At the end of the week, both groups took the same multiple question test. Our results showed that asynchronous group performed significantly better than the synchronous group. While showing the comparative advantage of the asynchronous method, our study also underlines the importance of interaction between instructors and students. We discuss our findings from a socioeconomic perspective, where we argue that the flexibility that the asynchronous method offers might have compensated for the accessibility issues (internet and/or computer) during the COVID-19 outbreak. As a policy recommendation, universities can offer lectures with a recorded option to allow students to interact with the course material multiple times.