A Comparison of Learning Across Instructional Modes

In the wake of widespread shifts to online education since 2020, the comparative efficacy of traditional in-class versus online learning modes remains a subject of debate, given the mixed and often contradictory findings of prior studies. This study addresses these inconsistencies by employing a rigorous within-subjects (repeated-measures) design: the same cohort of undergraduate students experienced all three instructional modalities—in-class, online synchronous, and online asynchronous—for the same course taught by the same instructor in a single semester, thereby self-selection bias and instructor variability. Multiple outcome measures were analyzed, including student perceptions on various dimensions (shown in the figure below) as well as objective performance metrics on assessments such as exams and quizzes. The study confirms results by replicating it at a second university.