Choosing Wisely: A Comparison of Online, Televised, and Face-to-Face Instructional Methods on Knowledge Acquisition of Broadcast Audience Concepts

Selecting an appropriate course content delivery method is a challenge educators face. Are online, televised, and face-to-face forms of instruction equally effective? Is any method superior in fostering knowledge acquisition? An experiment using students from three sections of a mass communication survey course utilized these instructional methods to teach students about radio audience measurement. Evaluations of the pre- and post-test results indicate that significant student knowledge acquisition occurred through exposure to all of the instructional methods. No method was found to be superior. Thus, this study demonstrated the viability of all three methods.