"A Comparison of Student Performance in an Online, Hybrid, and Traditionally Delivered Numerical Methods Course"

Numerical Methods is a course dealing with solving engineering problems using approximate mathematical techniques.It has been taught by this author 13 times in the past nine years at the University of Arkansas -Fort Smith campus.Six of those times the course was taught in a traditional lecture based format.Four times it was taught in a hybrid format where the class would meet once per week while having most of the content taught online via video instruction.Three times the course has been offered purely online during the summer.This paper analyzes 10 exam problems that have been given to students in at least two of the three formats, with 6 problems given to all three formats.Individual problems as well as the performance of the three student groups are compared to demonstrate the effect of the lecture format on learning.