Collaborative learning in online business education: Evidence from a field experiment

Abstract

Although online business degrees and student enrollments have increased, course quality and outcomes remain a challenge. We designed a collaborative learning activity at a large public university involving student-produced materials in an online managerial economics class. The activity included two parts: student production of a problem-solving video and rating of peer work. Students were randomly-sorted across identical class sections with and without the new activity. The findings based on final exam scores show that peer learning provides a positive impact on overall learning, and the activity also improves knowledge with respect to the topic of the video made.

Keywords:

• Collaborative learning
• field experiment
• online business education
• peer learning
• student-generated videos

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful for the instructional support from Morassa Danai and the efforts of Ken Moyer, Susan Gaitan, Elizabeth Pontius, Ka Yi, and Marisol Cardenas.

Notes

1 Each group of Likert-type questions showed high internal consistency. The 8 online preparation skills measures, 11 technology familiarity measures, 4 online learning efficacy measures, and 4 self-directedness measures all had a Cronbach’s alpha greater than 0.75 for each question group.

2 We divided the video score into that given by the instructor and that given by peers, as some research on peer evaluation has shown an inflation of the points given by one student rating another’s work, although demographic factors may not introduce a source of bias (Sherrard, Raafat, & Weaver, 1994).

3 The coefficients on the rating variables terms are jointly significant with F(2, 198) =3.05, Prob > F = .0494.

Additional information

Funding

Funding was provided by the National Research Center for Distance Education and Technological Advancements (DETA) (Subaward #163405512) and the U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education.