An Experiment Comparing HBSE Graduate Social Work Classes: Face-to-Face and at a Distance

This article describes a quasi-experimental comparison of two master's level social work classes delivering content on human behavior in the social environment. One class, delivered face-to-face, was largely synchronous. The other class, delivered using distance technologies, was more asynchronous than the first. The authors hypothesized that students would learn equally well in both classes, and did not reject that hypothesis. That was so even after accounting for strong explanation of achievement by grade point average adjusted for grade inflation. Though this study indicates that the distance education studied was apparently successful, the findings may not be highly generalizable, and the authors suggest that future studies need to look at achievement in various settings and curricular areas while carefully measuring and accounting for extraneous variables.