SPEED OF LIGHT VS. SPEED OF SOUND: COMPARING ONLINE AND FACE-TO-FACE CLASSES IN AN UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS LAW SETTING

This is a study of over 1000 students in a university setting. The study compares online students to traditional face-to-face students in an upper division undergraduate Business Law setting. While there are Business Law classes taught around the world, there is scant literature on comparisons of Business Law online versus face-to-face learning for pedagogical review in an undergraduate setting. This analysis compares quiz scores, exam scores, final grades, and dropout rates across six years of instruction. It also analyzes the type of legal topics covered with success rates measured by exam scores, as well as the times of day the class was taught to determine their influence on student outcomes. The differences in online and face-to-face are significant, but more importantly show that face-to-face Business Law students have a distinct advantage in this particular study and university setting. The study contributes in several ways to the growing empirical literature on the effectiveness of both face-to-face and online formats. First, it provides a direct comparison between online learning and classroom instruction with Business Law students in a university undergraduate setting with the same instructor. Second, it shows the topics that, both in common and separately, the two sets of students need in terms of additional training and learning for success in a Business Law setting.