Abstract:

During the academic year 2019/2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities have had to replace their face-to-face classes with online classes. This pandemic has created an unprecedented instructional environment for both teachers and students because they have had to learn to use new technologies and provide an interactive remote learning environment in a short period of time. Teachers of the Financial Management II course of the University of Murcia (3rd Degree in Business Administration and Management) used video conferencing for the distance learning.

The use of video conferencing in higher education is not new. Knipe and Lee (2002) find that students using video conferencing had a teaching and learning of less quality than student in the traditional classroom. In this line, Candarli and Yuksel (2012) found that students had a negative attitude towards the use of video conferencing in class in higher education. Serhan (2020) also find that the students’ attitude toward the use of Zoom was negative and they perceived it as having a negative effect on their learning experience and their motivation to learn. However, using video conferencing for teaching and learning have greater flexibility than the traditional classroom.

The objective of this study is to analyze whether distance learning has affected the marks obtained by students. Specifically, we compare the marks obtained by the students in the two intermediate tests of the Financial Management II course (3rd Degree in Business Administration and Management of the University of Murcia). While the first intermediate test was carried out the last week before quarantine, whit teaching developed by face-to-face classes, the second test was carried out virtually and for the units of the course that the students had taken online.

We used Blackboard collaborate for the distance learning, which is a web-based collaborative video conferencing tool. All theachers observed that students’ class attendance through video conferencing was higher than in face-to-face classes, which can be due to the greater convenience of distance classes. However, with regard to marks obtained by students in the two intermediate test, we do not find significant differences. Specifically, we find that the average mark of the first intermediate test was 5.56 out of 10, while the average mark of the second test was 5.7 out of 10. The difference found is not significant (t-Test is -0,47). We also found no significant differences when we compared the marks obtained by the students in the two exams per class group.

References:
[1] Candarli, D., & Yuksel, H. G. (2012). Students’ perceptions of video-conferencing in the classrooms in higher education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 47, 357-361.
[2] Knipe, D., & Lee, M. (2002). The quality of teaching and learning via videoconferencing. British Journal of Educational Technology, 33(3), 301–311.
[3] Serhan, D. (2020). Transitioning from face-to-face to remote learning: Students’ attitudes and perceptions of using Zoom during COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Technology in Education and Science (IJTES), 4(4), 335-342.

Keywords:

Distance learning, video conferencing, COVID-19, marks.