Classroom or online learning? Impact of experiential learning in business process management education

This paper presents an empirical study with 150 graduate students at a business school to analyse the educational impact of experiential learning about process-oriented thinking in the classroom versus online learning setting. The results show that both learning settings are effective in increasing student performance but the increase in student performance in the face-to-face setting is twice as much as that in the e-learning setting. While learning time has no impact on student performance in this study, active engagement in the learning process has a positive impact in the online learning setting, but not in the face-to-face setting. Contrary to general findings, the results of this study indicate that a face-to-face setting is preferable for experiential learning about process-oriented thinking. Practical implications are that online learning can be used for general understanding while classroom learning is preferred for deeper understanding in the context of experiential learning about process-oriented thinking.