Traditional vs. Technology-Mediated Learning: A Comparison of Students’ Course Evaluations

Technology-mediated distance learning has increasingly become a part of the business curricula, particularly in the delivery of MBA Programs. However, despite its popularity, sporadic efforts have been made to demonstrate its effectiveness by looking at actual students’ course evaluations as indicators of teaching and learning effectiveness. This paper compares the differences between two MBA classes’ evaluation of a Marketing Management course taught by the same instructor but delivered using two teaching methods: interactive video instruction and traditional face-to-face instruction. It also compares course evaluations of students in sending and receiving sites in the ITV environment. The results indicate that MBA students involved in the face-to-face classroom setting consistently rated the course higher than those in distance learning. In the ITV environment, no significant differences were noted from the student evaluations of those in the sending and receiving sites.