Blackboard Use and Students’ Performance

Blackboard Use and Students’ Performance Adugna Lemi Department of Economics UMass Boston Email: adugna.lemi@umb.edu May 15, 2009

Motivation • The University is spending a large sum of money to purchase and maintain LMS for the university community. • Its main target is to improve teaching and learning through improved communication for students and faculty. • It is expected that there would be some improvements in students’ performance as a result of the improved communication. • However, One need to see hard evidence to substantiate the expected benefits. • The purpose of this study is to present evidence or lack of evidence about the expected benefit. May 15, 2009

Previous Studies • Simkins (1999), Journal of Economic Education • In economics courses, use of web-assisted methods does not improve students performance compared to traditional way of teaching. • Rivera (2002), Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration • Based on survey of students (41 in traditional, 40 in hybrid and 53 in web-based information system courses). • There is no significant difference in student performance regardless of the class format. • Hammoud, et. al. (2008), International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education • Using survey and data from the tracking records of WebCT • Use of WebCT has positive influence on students’ grades (performances). May 15, 2009

Methods and Data • I used Blackboard tracking record of students for three of my courses (Econ 101, Econ 334 and Econ 336) from Spring 2008 & Spring 2009. The following records are used: • Total time spent, Folders and Files Viewed, and Number of Sessions accessed by each student. • As performance indicator, I used grades points of each student. • I tried to show if there is any link between the use of Blackboard and students’ performance. May 15, 2009

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Correlation Coefficients May 15, 2009

Conclusions • For sample semesters and courses considered in this study there seems to be no strong link between Blackboard use and students’ performance. • Although there is a very weak correlation between sessions attended and students’ performance. • This should not be taken as an evidence to show the limited benefits of LMS, further study needs to be done at the university level with larger sample from different departments and colleges. • It is also important to compare performance under different formats (traditional, hybrid, and online) May 15, 2009

Blackboard Use and Students’ Performance