Online vs. in-person: Exploring the outcomes and impacts

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the teaching of online courses has grown tremendously, especially with the rise in popularity of massive open online courses. In phonetics, the offerings of online courses has also grown. The University of Alberta has offered an online phonetics course for four years, which is academically equivalent to the in-person course. The University of Alberta online course runs as a standard semester course offered twice a year with the similar deadlines and structure as the in-person course. In this presentation we discuss and explore the advantages and challenges of online versus in-person courses from the instructor's perspective. We report the differences and similarities in student learning outcomes and student success. We discuss methods of student engagement, implementation of laboratory activities (active-learning), and exam invigilation. We also comment on the advantages of combining materials from online and in-person courses in blended learning environments.