Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an internet setting
…we find modest evidence that live-only instruction dominates internet instruction. These results are particularly strong for Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students.
The paper is here.
6 Responses
That said, as with all education research, it finds that absolutely nothing has a significant effect.
It is relevant that intro micro is a very, very easy course. It’s much more about “do you want to go to college?” than the course material itself.
I suspect that fewer students actually watched the online lectures than the live lectures. That would explain the demographic differences. How much should we value the time they saved?
I just skimmed the paper but I think the results helps the case for internet lectures.
1. The marginal cost of an internet lecture is smaller, and the difference in costs is (probably) higher than the difference in benefits. So internet wins.
2. Internet lectures allow high quality teachers to teach more students. This effect is likely to be important ( my guess). The paper does not address that, but this is the main advantage of internet lectures.
Maybe some people prefer live lectures because it’s a chance to see their friends and flirt during the break?
Their main estimate of the effect is tiny (1.4 percentage points) and not statistically significant.