Investigating the Effects of Synchronous versus Asynchronous Online Engagement on Performance of a Large Class

Abstract

This study examined the effects of online engagement in live lectures versus offline studies on students’ performance of an undergraduate Databases module with a large class size of over 400 students. We have discovered that attendance at synchronous (live) online-lectures has very little correlation to students’ performance. Our view is that the change to online learning has caused a considerable shift in study habits. In fact, a significant number of students who had hardly attended any live online-lectures still performed extremely well in the summative assessments, indicating that they were still engaging asynchronously.