Exploring Differences in Online and Face-to-Face Student Engagement and Performance in Business Writing

Abstract

Disengagement and burnout are hot button topics in business around the world in 2023. Students and faculty are not immune to these challenges. This paper reports on a data-driven exploration of student engagement and academic performance in a business writing course across two semesters. This course was historically taught only face-to-face (F2F) but evolved to F2F, hybrid, and online offerings as a result of the pandemic. The professor’s intuition was that the online students were not as engaged and were not performing as well as the students in the F2F sections, and a closer look at the engagement and performance data verified that suspicion. The paper summarizes the data and findings and proposes future research to help others who might be curious about the outcomes of online versus F2F teaching.