Comparing the effectiveness of online and face-to-face teaching and learning approaches on student performance using nonparametric methods

Abstract

The Covid-19 epidemic has impacted teaching and learning practices not just in elementary and secondary schools, but also in higher institutions. As a result, the new modes of learning and teaching activities that have changed from face-to-face to online may have an impact on students' performance. The goal of this study is to use nonparametric approaches to compare the performance of students at a tertiary institution who were studying face-to-face with those who were learning online. The quantitative students' evaluation scores in a statistics course from different schools in the institution were used in this study. The Shapiro-Wilk test reveals that the data violated the normality assumption of parametric techniques. As a result, nonparametric statistical analysis using the Mann-Whitney U Test and the Kruskal Wallis Test, which are alternative methods for the independent t-test and one-way analysis of variance were used to investigate whether differences in performance scores are significantly different between groups of students who have experienced different learning methods and have been in different schools. In terms of performance scores in a statistics course, our results demonstrate that online learning approaches outperform physical face-to-face learning.