Targeting Teaching: Does the Medium Matter? Online versus Paper Coursework

[Author Affiliation]Rey HernAndez-JuliAn, , , , rherna42@mscd.eduChristina Peters, , , , cpeter80@mscd.edu[Acknowledgment]We would like to thank Phyllis Simon and the team at Aplia for their support on this project. We would also like to thank Angela Dills, Laura Argys, Katherine Sauer, and session participants at the 2010 Western Economics Association annual meetings for their helpful comments.1. IntroductionInformation is increasingly accessed and read electronically rather than in print, as evidenced by the decline of newspaper circulation rates in favor of online versions (Plambeck 2010). In colleges, as everywhere else, more learning is taking place on the computer (Allen and Seaman 2006). Many colleges and universities have actively pursued the incorporation of digital technology into the classroom wherever possible; "smart" classrooms are now the norm, and online classes are substituting for their traditional live-lecture counterparts. As individuals are increasingly accessing information on a different medium, it is possible that the degree to which they are processing and retaining the information is affected. For instance, there is evidence that information accessed through a computer is less likely to be recalled than print information (Jones, Pentecost, and Requena 2005). Some researchers argue that online reading is less focused and more scattered (Mangen 2008), leading to lower levels of accuracy and higher fatigue while taking more time (Dillon 1992). However, other studies find few differences between online and print readers, with no significant differences in recall (Oborne and Holton 1988).This article uses a randomized experiment to test whether online teaching tools impact student learning. In particular, we assign students from two sections of Principles of Microeconomics into two groups. One group has access to homework assignments on paper and is required to submit their work in class. The other group has access to all their assignments online. When they log on to the course website, they work through assignments with identical content and submit their answers on the computer by the same due date. The homework content for both groups is kept as similar as possible. In addition, the design of this experiment randomizes within class section rather than across class section, thereby avoiding concerns of unobservable class-specific differences that have not been accounted for by previous work (e.g., Agarwal and Day 1998; Brown and Liedholm 2002; Nguyen and Trimarchi 2010).We find that students in the experimental treatment group (who submit homework online) have 7% increased homework completion rates and 27% more class absences compared to their counterparts in the control group (who submit homework on paper). Because of these increased completion rates, students completing homework online earn higher homework grades for the semester. However, there does not appear to be any subsequent effect on student outcomes as measured by final exam performance. More broadly, since the benefit of online homework submission for improved student learning seems to operate primarily through increased rates of homework completion, our results suggest that the quality of learning does not seem to be significantly affected by how one is exposed to the information.The rest of our article proceeds as follows. First, we provide some background and describe the experiment and the subjects. After outlining the estimation strategy, we present our empirical results and conclude.2. Background and the ExperimentIf the medium through which information is accessed subsequently affects an individual's learning, then we can express the learning outcome as a function of the particular medium used (e.g., electronic text vs. paper). More generally, (Formula omitted. See article image.) where X represents all other factors that affect how an individual learns, such as age, level of effort, and ability. …