A Comparison of Student Performance in Online and Face-To-Face Learning for Statistics Subject

Abstract

Due to the Second Movement Control Order (MCO 2.0), online teaching and learning (TnL) continued. Covid-19 seems to have an impact on students in many ways. The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not there are differences in academic achievement between online and face-to-face learning. Hence, the assessment marks for 150 students from the last five semesters of a statistics course were taken. During the Covid-19 pandemic, these five semesters include two sessions of face-to-face learning and three sessions of online learning. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, ANOVA and Post-Hoc test. Based on descriptive data, it was revealed that the achievement of marks for face-to-face learning sessions in the September - January 2020 session was higher than earlier semesters of study, while female students outperformed male students. However, female students' performance was seen slightly decline for the online semester. The findings from the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) indicated significant differences in achievement based on the semester of study, gender as well as interaction between gender and semester of study on mark achievement. Based on the Post-Hoc test results, it was discovered that face-to-face learning performed better than online learning throughout the last two semesters. However, performance during the first semester of online learning (March - July 2020 session) was similar to that of face-to-face learning. It is intended that the findings of this study would help educators improve the effectiveness of their teaching methods.