Online learning tools, particularly those that focus on interaction with course material and other students, have a positive impact on students’ grades, according to a new study on first-year Carleton University chemistry students by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO).
Carleton chemistry professor Bob Burk, director of teaching and learning Patrick Lyons, research assistant Andrea Noriega, and EDC instructional designer and research facilitator Dragana Polovina-Vukovic, all contributed to the study, which looked at the attendance, performance and resource usage of 919 first-year Carleton students. It found that the most significant impact on grades came from a homework management system, which allowed students to interact directly with course content by answering questions and solving problems while receiving immediate feedback, and an interactive learning management system that offered PowerPoint slides from lectures, videos of lab experiments, previous exams, and a discussion board to communicate with other students. Read the full report.