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The current study involves a comparison of student levels of engagement, ability to leam autonomously, and interaction with peers and faculty in two different learning settings: a large lecture hall and online. Results suggest that learning mechanism drives the styles of learning and teaching practiced in traditional and online learning settings. Students in the online course were more reflective in their learning practices, spending more time independently preparing for the course, as well as being more involved in class discussions. By comparison, students from the traditional lecture hall reported being more collaborative in their learning with classmates.
INTRODUCTION
The rate of online educational course offerings in universities has skyrocketed in the past ten years. Almost 60 percent of students have taken at least one online course during their college tenures (National Center for Education Statistics, 2003). Despite the increased representation of distance education courses, many concerns remain regarding the quality and delivery of this learning mechanism. Advo- cates of distance education argue that there is no reason to assume it is substandard when compared to traditional courses (see Hiltz, 1994; Russell, 1999). In fact, some have sug- gested online classes have an added advantage over the typical large lecture hall where learn- ing is mostly teacher-centered (Danielson & McGreal, 2000; Edwards, Cordray, & Dor- bolo, 2000; Maeroff, 2003). The current study is a comparison of student levels of engagement, ability to learn autonomously, and interaction with peers and faculty in different learning settings. By comparing lecture hall and online learning, conclusions can be made as to the ability of students to be engaged, to interact with their peers and faculty, and to learn autonomously in both mechanisms.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Most criticisms voiced about online courses are due to the concern that the interaction between students and faculty is inferior to the traditional classroom setting, making student engagement difficult (Meyer-Peyton, 2000; Purcell-Robertson & Purcell, 2000). Student interactions with faculty and peers are critical to learning and are at the core of any educational situation (Bruffee, 1993; Dede, 1990, 1996; Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, & Turhoff, 1995; Renninger & Shumar, 2002). Further, the strong association between formal and informal faculty-student contact and enhanced student learning has been confirmed (Astin, 1993; Ewell & Jones, 1996; Fries-Britt, 2000;...