Why Not? A Pilot Study of College Students’ Reasons for Avoiding an Online Course

• In Event: Poster Session 8
  In Poster Session: Division J Section 4 Poster Session

Abstract

The increasing cost of higher education has led to suggestions that some face-to-face courses be replaced entirely with online ones; but how satisfied are students are likely to be if they are forced into online courses? We addressed this question by examining why students choose to avoid an online course. Through a survey, 48 students in a large-lecture Educational Psychology course told us why they did not take the course online, when it was available in the same semester, at the same cost. The most frequently selected reason (58%) was that the respondent believed they would learn more face-to-face. Twenty-seven students also completed an open-ended question, often explaining their informal theories about the superiority of a face-to-face lecture.

Authors

• Kevin O'Neill, Simon Fraser University

• Tzy Horng Sai, Simon Fraser University