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Comparing student outcomes in traditional vs intensive, online graduate programs in health professional education

BACKGROUND: Health professions’ education programs are undergoing enormous changes, including increasing use of online and intensive, or time reduced, courses. Although evidence is mounting for online and intensive course formats as separate designs, literature investigating online and intensive for...

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Autores principales: Harwood, Kenneth J., McDonald, Paige L., Butler, Joan T., Drago, Daniela, Schlumpf, Karen S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6196001/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30342525
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-018-1343-7
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author Harwood, Kenneth J.
McDonald, Paige L.
Butler, Joan T.
Drago, Daniela
Schlumpf, Karen S.
author_facet Harwood, Kenneth J.
McDonald, Paige L.
Butler, Joan T.
Drago, Daniela
Schlumpf, Karen S.
author_sort Harwood, Kenneth J.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Health professions’ education programs are undergoing enormous changes, including increasing use of online and intensive, or time reduced, courses. Although evidence is mounting for online and intensive course formats as separate designs, literature investigating online and intensive formats in health professional education is lacking. The purpose of the study was to compare student outcomes (final grades and course evaluation ratings) for equivalent courses in semester long (15-week) versus intensive (7-week) online formats in graduate health sciences courses. METHODS: This retrospective, observational study compared satisfaction and performance scores of students enrolled in three graduate health sciences programs in a large, urban US university. Descriptive statistics, chi square analysis, and independent t-tests were used to describe student samples and determine differences in student satisfaction and performance. RESULTS: The results demonstrated no significant differences for four applicable items on the final student course evaluations (p values range from 0.127 to 1.00) between semester long and intensive course formats. Similarly, student performance scores for final assignment and final grades showed no significant differences (p = 0.35 and 0.690 respectively) between semester long and intensive course formats. CONCLUSION: Findings from this study suggest that 7-week and 15-week online courses can be equally effective with regard to student satisfaction and performance outcomes. While further study is recommended, academic programs should consider intensive online course formats as an alternative to semester long online course formats.
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spelling pubmed-61960012018-10-30 Comparing student outcomes in traditional vs intensive, online graduate programs in health professional education Harwood, Kenneth J. McDonald, Paige L. Butler, Joan T. Drago, Daniela Schlumpf, Karen S. BMC Med Educ Research Article BACKGROUND: Health professions’ education programs are undergoing enormous changes, including increasing use of online and intensive, or time reduced, courses. Although evidence is mounting for online and intensive course formats as separate designs, literature investigating online and intensive formats in health professional education is lacking. The purpose of the study was to compare student outcomes (final grades and course evaluation ratings) for equivalent courses in semester long (15-week) versus intensive (7-week) online formats in graduate health sciences courses. METHODS: This retrospective, observational study compared satisfaction and performance scores of students enrolled in three graduate health sciences programs in a large, urban US university. Descriptive statistics, chi square analysis, and independent t-tests were used to describe student samples and determine differences in student satisfaction and performance. RESULTS: The results demonstrated no significant differences for four applicable items on the final student course evaluations (p values range from 0.127 to 1.00) between semester long and intensive course formats. Similarly, student performance scores for final assignment and final grades showed no significant differences (p = 0.35 and 0.690 respectively) between semester long and intensive course formats. CONCLUSION: Findings from this study suggest that 7-week and 15-week online courses can be equally effective with regard to student satisfaction and performance outcomes. While further study is recommended, academic programs should consider intensive online course formats as an alternative to semester long online course formats. BioMed Central 2018-10-20 /pmc/articles/PMC6196001/ /pubmed/30342525 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-018-1343-7 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Harwood, Kenneth J.
McDonald, Paige L.
Butler, Joan T.
Drago, Daniela
Schlumpf, Karen S.
Comparing student outcomes in traditional vs intensive, online graduate programs in health professional education
title Comparing student outcomes in traditional vs intensive, online graduate programs in health professional education
title_full Comparing student outcomes in traditional vs intensive, online graduate programs in health professional education
title_fullStr Comparing student outcomes in traditional vs intensive, online graduate programs in health professional education
title_full_unstemmed Comparing student outcomes in traditional vs intensive, online graduate programs in health professional education
title_short Comparing student outcomes in traditional vs intensive, online graduate programs in health professional education
title_sort comparing student outcomes in traditional vs intensive, online graduate programs in health professional education
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6196001/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30342525
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-018-1343-7
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