Online Versus Face-to-Face: A Quantitative Study of Factors Influencing Students’ Choice of Study Mode using Chi-Square Test and Binary Logistic Regression

Abstract

For online learning in the January 2019 semester, students at the Singapore University of Social Sciences were able to choose whether they want to study in virtual or face-to-face mode in two courses. Virtual refers to full online learning whereby students study, in a six-week term, without the need to meet face-to-face with the instructor while face-to-face refers to blended e-learning whereby students received either six or three face-to-face lessons with e-learning resources. In full online mode, students will meet the instructor virtually via video conferencing on a weekly basis. Data were obtained to find out which variables actually had an effect of students’ choice of learning mode. 370 students were analysed and the variablesincluding gender, marital status, race, nationality, course, qualification, school, programme, intake, age (now), age (joint) and cumulative grade point average (CGPA) were examined. Each variable was compared with the students’ mode of study in order to identify if they are dependent (e.g. gender versus study mode, race versus study mode, etc.) based on a chi-square test. The significant variables were further investigated using a binary logistic regression model. It was found that qualification, intake and CGPA were found to be significant for students’ choice of learning.