Pedagogical Characteristics of Online and Face-to-Face Classes

Currently, many students have had experience with both face-to-face and online classes. We asked such students at 46 different universities in the United States to evaluate the pedagogical characteristics of their most recently completed face-to-face class and their most recently completed online class. The results show that students rate online classes as greatly superior to face-to-face classes in terms of convenience and allowing self-pacing, but they also rate online classes as inferior on a number of other characteristics. Online and face-to-face instructional formats each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Detailing those strengths and weaknesses should help us modify both methods of teaching to reduce the weaknesses and maintain the strengths. (Contains 1 table.)