Characteristics of Successful Instruction in Introductory Finance Course: Online Versus Traditional Course Delivery (original) (raw)

2018, The Journal of International Management Studies

Since the seminal papers by Barr (1958) and Hildebrand, Wilson, and Dienst (1971), many researchers have investigated the traits that create a successful teacher. In a similar vein, the advent of online education elicits a growing body of literature that expounds the characteristics of a successful online instructor. Several pieces of research have further investigated the similarities and differences in student perception and satisfaction in online and traditional course formats. We seek the common qualities that make an instructor effective in both formats of the instructional methods by blending the established 'best practices' in teaching with the key characteristics of effective online teaching. This paper uses an introductory finance course over several semesters to explore these hypotheses. The data for the study has been collected from various sections of the course that have been taught by the same instructor in both online and technology-aided traditional formats. This study is unique in two aspects. First, it comprehensively investigates the factors that can affect the performance of an instructor irrespective of the mode of instruction. To this effect, the study investigates three classes of factors, namely, teaching materials, collaborative learning, and instructor performance and student-instructor interactions. Second, the study uses factor analysis to identify relevant explanatory variables and uses multiple discriminant analysis to test the teaching effectiveness factors proposed by several past authors for their significance. The results fail to indicate any broad differences in student satisfaction and performance irrespective of the delivery format. Significant differences in factor relevancy, however, exist in online and technology-aided traditional instructions to determine student performance and satisfaction. Specifically, the student-instructor engagements and the availability of self-study materials are critically important for students' success in online classes. The findings of this study can shed further light on the ongoing search for the common instructional factors in teaching effectiveness irrespective of the instructional format.