Faster is better, right?
Last year, I conducted a little analysis for my edification around this question using my CIS 178 class. The TL;DR was that non-traditional populations suffered in a compressed version of my CIS 178 class.
As we all know, a sample size of one is the best way to conduct serious research. Still, I did have the advantage of knowing that my 178 class is identical content, whether it is 14 weeks or seven weeks, primarily because I’m lazy (lazy… like a FOX!), and I use exactly the same course shells for both. One of my concerns is that 7-week courses may be successful because faculty “Nerf” them. (Which is to say – reduce the difficulty – in the same way Nerf toys reduce the difficulty of getting hit in the face with the ball. 😉 IR provided me with stats for my 178 classes from 2015 to 2022, and it breaks down as follows (OL&FTF):
When I looked at grades, it was interesting that students in compressed classes outperformed or underperformed those in traditional classes. So, more “A”s but more “D”s & “E”s as well.
More broadly speaking, if we define student successes as C- or better, we get the following:
I realize I’m presenting the same data twice here, but it was instructive to see it both ways. There is a difference here, but we don’t quite get to the 5% that we usually call statistical significance.
However, when you break it down by some of the dimensions we have available, it does get interesting.
Factoring in sex, the disparity widens.
As does veteran status.
Although we’re talking about pretty small numbers.
.
And finally ethnic group:
Sorry, that last one’s kind of an eye chart.
I’d be interested to see how that played out for all 14 and 7-week classes compared and then do a little finer grain slicing and dicing, looking at the difference between online and in-person and the like.
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