A Comparison of MBA Business Students' Academic Performance between Three Modes of Delivery

This eight-year longitudinal study evaluates the academic performance of Executive MBA students across three academic delivery modes. The study includes 12 of the 14 modules in the curriculum at an AMBA-accredited business school in South Africa. The modules Technology Management and Organisational Behavior could not be used due to incomplete data because they were discontinued. The modes of delivery are 1) full-contact (2017-2019), 2) full-online during Covid-19's hard lockdown (2020-2021), and 3) hybrid (2022-2023). The study aims to determine if the delivery mode significantly influences students' academic performance. The One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) showed significant differences exist for 11 of the 12 modules across the delivery modes. However, fewer practically significant differences were identified when Cohen’s effect size was used as a refined measurement to determine which delivery modes differ between specific modules. However, comparing the academic performance between the delivery modes, it is evident that the hybrid mode fared significantly better and outperformed full-online and full-contact classes. The analysis showed that students fare equally well in the so-called hard management skills as in the “soft skills”. Likewise, there are no significant differences in the marks of research and the integrative modules. This shows that study leading can effectively be done in any of the three modes of delivery. The results show that modern students (post 2022) are better adapted towards hybrid learning than historic students (2017-2019) were to full-contact tuition models. This study, therefore, provides evidence that modern mature students (such as Executive MBA students) as well-suited to study towards an MBA in a hybrid learning model. The study concludes that the hybrid mode of delivery should be retained and refined as a viable tuition model for business schools to use.