Abstract:

Distance and blended education allow study even when full-time teaching is difficult or impossible. Many educational institutions have had to adapt their educational delivery formats, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Distance and blended formats are also increasingly important in tertiary education. Long-term observations made at our university show that the results of students in distance education are worse than those in full-time education. Therefore, looking for new approaches to improve distance and face-to-face education is necessary.

This paper describes the research results that compare student success rates in face-to-face, synchronous, and asynchronous distance learning. The aim was to determine whether these formats significantly affect success in education. The research was conducted among computer science students in bachelor's and master's degree programs. From the statistical results, it is clear that asynchronous learning is the most difficult for students and their learning outcomes are worse than those of full-time and synchronous distance learning. The reasons for the poorer results include, for example, higher demands on students' motivation, the need to manage the independent organization of study, and more difficult communication between the participants in the course. The most significant differences are among first-year undergraduate students. This paper describes appropriate tools and methods for improving the quality of asynchronous distance learning.

Keywords:

Asynchronous form of teaching, distance learning, full-time teaching, synchronous form of teaching, research.