Have you ever had the feeling that no matter how hard you try, nothing works out like you want? Think Charlie Brown and his decades-long attempts to just kick the football, or the 108 years of yearning by beleaguered Chicago Cubs fans prior to their 2016 World Series win.
If you’ve ever taught a course online and then, at the end of the course, read your student evaluations, you are probably nodding in agreement right now. Ashutosh Bhave, assistant professor of marketing at the Walton College, and his coauthor BPS Murthi (UT Dallas), understand why. In “Comparative analysis of student evaluations: Exploring the effects of course modality and type in graduate business courses,” they explore the differences between online and face-to-face graduate business course evaluations and find that even though grades have no bearing on ratings, students oftentimes “express significant dissatisfaction with online courses.” Also noteworthy, especially since many graduate business classes are quantitative, is that quantitative courses and instructors receive lower scores than qualitative ones.
Bhave and Murthi’s study has important implications for business school administrators, faculty, and other stakeholders. For starters, they are the first to study how satisfaction levels vary across quantitative and qualitative courses at the graduate level using such a large sample of business students. The sheer size of their data set garner attention: 16 years’ worth of evaluations from multiple instructors of online and offline graduate courses, with their dataset encompassing 2,084 courses taught by 52 instructors. Second, it prompts questions about the evaluation standards many graduate business schools use to evaluate teaching effectiveness.
Staying Online
Online education nonetheless plays an important role in the U.S. higher education landscape. In 2021, 8.5 million students took at least one online class at U.S. public intuitions and around 30% of students exclusively take online classes. Online education provides a level of convenience that appeals to working students and also benefits institutions given that it can be easily scaled at lower costs than face-to-face classes. For graduate business courses, online classes also allow graduate students to remain employed, engage in internships, and work or study abroad while still making progress towards their degrees.
Graduate business studies combine qualitative and quantitative courses; for example, MBA students at the University of Arkansas will take a quantitative-focused marketing analytics course but may also take a more qualitative consumer behavior course. The imbalance in course evaluation scores between qualitative and quantitative courses is not something that will just even out on its own. Instead, it seems practically ingrained in the experience due to factors often beyond the instructor’s control, such as self-selection of students, view of course material, limited interaction opportunities, and the like.
Furthermore, online education is here to stay: the proliferation of online courses after the pandemic proves as much. Bhave and Murthi suggest that institutions and instructors be aware of these differences in student satisfaction between online/offline courses and qualitative/quantitative subjects. Awareness is a good first step, but does it really solve the problem?
What Can Instructors Do About It?
Hint: the answer to the subheading’s question is not “avoid teaching online.” Yes, Bhave and Murthi note that online courses typically receive lower student course evaluations. But Bhave and Murthi also note that average grades did not affect student satisfaction. What this means is that instructors should avoid the temptation to make courses easier and boost performance via extra credit or grading points. Effective teaching matters more than grade inflation when it comes to student satisfaction.
Even if instructors hold firm in their teaching practices, though, they may still see lower ratings, especially if they teach quantitative courses online. Some of that is due to the limited interaction opportunities compared to face-to-face classes and to the fact that many online students work full time.
If that seems like bad news, or at least a return to the futility experience by 108 years of Chicago Cubs fans, realize that there’s a silver lining to that expectation of lower scores, as Bhave and Murthi recommend rethinking whether the evaluation standards institutions use are appropriate given the many factors beyond the control of the instructor. If instructors know that no matter what they do it will result in a lower range of scores, then perhaps the weighting and scoring mechanisms should be rethought. Perhaps the time has come for envisioning a different set of evaluation standards for online and face-to-face graduate courses as well as for quantitative and qualitative subjects.
At the very least, not viewing the efficacy and satisfaction levels of online and quantitative courses through the same lens as traditional or qualitative courses could inject more fairness into the entire course evaluation experience. Student course evaluations are often examined by departmental leaders, accreditation boards, tenure review boards, and a variety of other important stakeholders on- and off-campus. Creating a more nuanced understanding of how to read them may unlock a stronger sense of best practices, better identify campus and departmental leaders in online education, and ensure that students get the educational experiences they need.
