UC Irvine

Online education is becoming increasingly integral to postsecondary education. However, student performance in online courses do not parallel performance in in-person courses. This dissertation presents a series of studies investigating three undergraduate online courses at a large public four-year university.

The first study examines how online instruction affects different personality types, as measured by student responses to items on the Big Five Inventory. Using historical course grades for all students enrolled in two online public health courses and employing student fixed effects in a linear regression models, I estimate student performance in online courses relative to their own performance in in-person courses. I include interaction effects with personality to examine whether online courses differentially impact academic performance for different personality types. Findings suggest that highly conscientious students and students with high openness to experience are differentially impacted by online instruction.

The second and third study examine a scheduling intervention implemented in three different courses. Using a randomized control design, students in the courses were assigned either to a treatment group or control group. Treatment students were asked to schedule their coursework on a weekly basis for the full duration of each course. One of the two studies incentivized the act of studying as scheduled while the other simply incentivized the act of scheduling without regard to whether or not the student followed his or her schedule. Using course clickstream data, gradebook data, institutional data, and survey data, a series of linear regression models are built to estimate the intent-to-treat effect of the scheduling intervention on students’ study times and course grades. Mixed results are found across the two studies, though they suggest neutral to positive results for the scheduling intervention.

The last study examines students’ subsequent course performance and choice of major following the scheduling intervention in the second of the two studies. Using subsequent course grades and course performance averages for both the given and past terms, regression models are built to estimate the effect of the scheduling intervention. Findings suggest long-term positive impacts of the intervention on academic performance.