SRM Group Assignment

“Effectiveness of Online and Offline Learning in Higher Education”

Submitted to
Prof. Pradeep Krishnatray

Submitted by
Hitansh Achantani (UH21067)
Akash Routray (UH21071)
Allu Neetha (UH21072)
G Vindhya (UH21085)
Popuri Ravi Sankar (UH21099)
Saini Naik (UH21104)
Saloni Misra (UH21105)
Sattwiki Dey (UH21109)
Shriya Mahapatro (UH21114)
Sonali Pattnaik (UH21119)

Group-3, Section-B, MBA HRM 2021-23

“A Comparative Study on Effectiveness of Online and Offline Learning
in Higher Education”
INTRODUCTION

In the digital era of 2021, the education system has developed many ways to expand the
learning material for students to study. The most traditional way is physical learning, face-to-
face or offline method. Student motivation, technical issues, time management, and limited
internet access contribute significantly to offline education, which is still the most popular
teaching method. In the offline teaching model, students were required to attend class in person
to improve the effectiveness of face-to-face teaching. Offline learning is not the only method
to study. Apart from various problems, online learning has provided benefits for expanding the
scope of education. The Covid 19 pandemic hampered the face-to-face teaching and learning
process, and it has now changed to an online technique. Higher education must give significant
thought to a problem involving online instruction.

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted higher education's teaching and learning and student-
teacher interactions. As a result of this pandemic, universities have limited carrying out
exclusive activities. Many countries have taken steps to prevent the broader spread of the virus.
The institutions make an effort to keep the education process and education around the world
continuity by using online learning. The data will be collected using a survey form from various
colleges and universities in across geographies to determine the efficacy of study through
online education and offline learning.

BRIEF REVIEW OF LITERATURE

In the digital era 2021, the education system has developed many ways to expand the learning
material for students to study. The most traditional way is physical learning, face-to-face or
offline method. Higher education required serious consideration to address issue related to
online teaching. The institutions made an effort to keep the education process and education
around the world continuity going, by using online learning. The data was collected using a
survey form from various colleges and universities in various countries to determine the
efficacy of study through online learning and offline learning.

The objective of the study was to assess the effectiveness of online and offline learning through
higher education. The sudden outbreak of Covid-19 in various parts of the world in 2020 has
severely affected the educational institutions in various countries. Students were affected in the
way to accept the hybrid form of learning and also grasp the interest towards the classes that
were conducted online. The study was carried out in India, Indonesia, Malaysia and other
countries with 100 respondents among which major responses were from the youth population
studying in Bachelor’s program, Diploma and Master’s mostly. The findings indicated that the
effectiveness of online education is dismal, as students find it difficult to adjust to the online
mode of education and the offline mode of education remains the most preferred mode of
education.

The study examined how higher education is effective both in online learning and offline
learning mode. A survey is a research instrument that contains several questions to collect
information from interviewees. A self-structured questionnaire was designed in four sections.
In the first section, each respondent needed to fill out their demographic information. Likert
scale questions were used for the Fourth sections to get the responses on the effectiveness of
online learning and offline learning through higher education. In order to reinforce and
combine information already investigated, or case study on online and offline learning, the
study additionally gathered information from a website, book or journal.

In early 2020, the global pandemic (Covid-19) broke out and seriously affected educational
advances around the world, which simultaneously boosted the development of online learning.
Hence, many teachers and students have changed their ways in the learning methods, and they
also suggested that online learning is much better than offline learning during the pandemic
Covid-19 situation. The student prefers offline learning since they can focus, activate, and
enjoy throughout the session by understanding the content better and do communication easily.
Apart from this, many of the students in higher education agree that the online learning tools
help to improve students’ academic performance because it helps them do the task more
efficiently and can always playback the video of the online learning tools that have been
recorded to help to improve the academic performance. The quality was dependent on various
factors. In order to protect the success of online learning, the study needed to systematically
examine the design principles of digital learning materials, learning objectives and preferences
and characteristics of students.

METHODOLOGY

This survey aimed to gather data from students at different colleges and institutions from India
in order to learn their views and observations. It was designed to examine how higher education
is effective both in online learning and offline learning mode. For this investigation, the online
survey was carried out using Google Forms, because questionnaire is the most suitable way to
collect information or data when the respondent group is spread across the geography. A survey
is a research instrument that contains several questions to collect information from
interviewees. Questionnaires can be regarded as an interview in writing. They can be done by
phone, by post, by computer or by face to face.

A self-structured questionnaire was designed in two sections. In the first section, each
respondent was required to fill out their demographic information. The fundamental goal of the
rest of the survey was to know the respondents' views on the effectiveness of online learning
and offline learning via higher education, and on how often students spend a week studying.

Two kinds of scales were used in the questionnaire, the Likert scale and a Quantitative scale.
Likert Scale is a standardized scale commonly used in survey research which allows the
respondents to specify their level of agreement in 5 points -
1 - Strongly disagree
2 - Disagree
3 - Neither agree nor disagree
4 - Agree
5 - Strongly agree

The last two questions had a quantitative scale which is a customized scale to record frequency
against a 5-point ordinal scale.

The questionnaire has been taken from an article bearing the name “A Comparative Study on
Effectiveness of Online and Offline Learning in Higher Education” by authors Wei Lun Koay,
Kok Ban Teoh and Lim Chung Hong published in “International Journal of Tourism &
Hospitality in Asia Pasific”
Therefore the final Null Hypothesis for the analysis is - Computed factors are not impacting
the number of study hours of the students before or after pandemic.

DATA ANALYSIS

In our case, the 23rd and 24th items are the dependent variables, which indicate the number of
hours spent learning online after Covid-19 and the number of hours spent in offline classes
before Covid-19, per day on an average, respectively.
The rest of the items are our independent variables.

1. Factor Analysis

Factor analysis is often used in data reduction to identify a small number of factors
having a larger impact on the hypothesis. In this survey, as there are 15 items and we
need to know specifically which items are impacting our hypothesis, we considered
factor analysis which can be used for our further analysis.

On analyzing, out of 15 items, eigenvalues were more than 1.0 for 4 items. So, we
compute that there are 4 factors that should be considered in our analysis further.

To understand how suited our data is for Factor Analysis, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO)
was measured. KMO returns values between 0 and 1 and is represented as follows -

• 0.00 to 0.49 unacceptable

• 0.50 to 0.59 miserable
• 0.60 to 0.69 mediocre
• 0.70 to 0.79 middling
• 0.80 to 0.89 meritorious
• 0.90 to 1.00 marvelous

As the KMO measure is …, it depicts that whatever survey that we have done according to our
hypothesis is adequate.

From the rotated component matrix, the items having values greater than 0.5 under each
component are taken into consideration and are used to construct factors.
 2. Reliability

Cronbach Alpha is a reliability test conducted within SPSS in order to measure the internal
consistency i.e. reliability of the measuring instrument (Questionnaire). It is most commonly
used when the questionnaire is developed using multiple Likert scale statements and therefore
to determine if the scale is reliable or not.
The acceptable reliability value is 0.6. Therefore if your questionnaire’s reliability result is
more than 0.6 then the questionnaire is considered “reliable”.
From the rotation component matrix, we have grouped 15 variables into 4 factors.
In our analysis, the Cronbach alpha value of standardized items is more than 0.7 for every
factor, which depicts that the items that are chosen for the survey are reliable.

3. Independent T Test

The independent-samples t-test (or independent t-test, for short) compares the means between
two unrelated groups on the same continuous, dependent variable. in order to determine
whether there is statistical evidence that the associated population means are significantly
different.
The significance value of the t-tail test should be less than 0.05. In our case, the significance
value is more than 0.05. Which means that the independent variable, item 23 and 24 have no
significant effect on the means between the variables. Therefore, the statistical evidence
associated with the population isn't impacting the respondents.
 4. Regression

A regression analysis is a set of statistical processes for estimating the relationships between a dependent
variable (often called the 'outcome' or 'response' variable) and one or more independent variables (often
called 'predictors', 'covariates', 'explanatory variables' or 'features'). A regression analysis is done for
one of two purposes: In order to predict the value of the dependent variable for individuals for
whom some information concerning the explanatory variables is available, or in order to
estimate the effect of some explanatory variable on the dependent variable.
Regression analysis was done twice, first considering the 16th item which was “Online learning
is more important compared to offline learning in the current situation” as a dependent variable
against the factors that were computed after the factor analysis, taken as the independent
variable.
The second time, the 17th item which was “Students focus more during offline learning
compared to online learning.” was the dependent variable against the factors that were
computed after the factor analysis, taken as the independent variable.

In this analysis we derive the following -

• ANOVA significance level - If it is more than 0.05, it signifies that the null hypothesis
is not rejected. In our case it was 0.885 (before covid) and 0.575(after covid) , which
was more than 0.05. This signifies that number of hours students are studying before or
after Covid 19 is not affected by the factors computed from the survey
• R value - This indicates how much is the variance of each item against all other items.
Our R value was 0.132 (before covid) and 0.207 (after covid)
• R square - This is the proportion of the variances that the dependent variable is
accounted for by the set of independent variables in the model. Our R square value is
0.017 (before covid) and 0.043(after covid)
• Adjusted R square - This parameter is useful when there are a large number of
independent variables. It gives accurate information about the items in the model. Such
large number can't be dealt with by R square. Our adjusted R square value is -0.043
(before covid) and -0.016 (after covid) .

Dependent Variable: After COVID-19, how many hours will you spend on online learning
per day on an average.
Dependent Variable: Before COVID-19, how many hours will you spend on offline learning
per day on an average

RESULTS

In our research , our null hypothesis was “ Computed factors are not impacting the number of
study hours of the students before or after the pandemic” .

We floated a questionnaire in different B-schools across India and by the results we did data
analysis through 4 different methods - Factor Analysis, Reliability, IND t Test and Regression.

In each of the analyses we found out that there is enough statistical evidence to conclude that
none of the factors are impacting the number of study hours of the students before or after the
pandemic. Hence, we accept our null hypothesis.

ASSUMPTIONS:

For Regression Analysis:

ASSUMPTIONS - 1
• When you fit a regression line only to summarize the observed relationship between
two variables, you must ensure that
 • That the variables are measured at least at the ordinal level. There should be
meaningful order to the values of the variables.
• That the relationship between the two variables is linear.

ASSUMPTIONS – 2
• However, if you want to test the hypotheses about the population regression line, your
data must satisfy additional assumptions.
• All the observations must be independent.
• For each value of the IV, the distribution of the values of the DV must be
normal.
• The variance of the distribution of the DV must be the same for all values of the
IV
• The relationship between the DV and the IV must be linear in the population: In
other words, the means of the distribution of the DV must fall on a straight line.

For Factor Analysis:

• The independent variables exhibits random sampling

• Relationship between observed variables is linear
• The observed variables exhibits normal distribution and multivariate normality
property.

CONCLUSION

No doubt that online learning has been enormously beneficial in the times of pandemic and its
limitations. The teaching-learning activities are also done more or less satisfactorily. However,
the network problem remains the main problem in online learning method
If the effects of pandemic are to be specifically considered, a study conducted on the Impact of
COVID-19 Pandemic on the academic performance of students using similar statistical tools
suggests that the academic performance was affected in varying degrees with slightly
increasing performance in the online learning mode.
Some other research on the same also demonstrates that online learning is better than offline
learning using higher education methodologies, none of the included research claimed online
learning to be less successful than offline learning strategies, regardless of statistical
approaches used.
So, it is already established knowledge that online learning is a valid strategy for higher
education instruction and has its advantages for enhancing the education of students.
From our analysis, however it can be concluded that the results are more or less neutral
indicating each to its own rather than one mode of learning superior to the other which suggests
that in terms of learning, students who apply themselves diligently should be successful in
either format.
DISCUSSION

Regarding its theoretical contribution, our study broadens the vision of the online and offline
mode by focussing on such relevant factors as interest, attitude and strategy use throughout
their experiences.
Concerning its pedagogical implications,first,this study suggested that there was a logical
transition from online activity to offline activity and vice versa.

Online learning has shown a significant growth over the last decade and it is predicted that on
online learning market will be $350 billion by 2025. With the continuous advancement in the
sector of online learning it is safe to say that online learning is here to stay, and it is not difficult
to imagine an exciting future of the online learning. If there will be timely feedback from the
instructor be provided to the students and proper and quick technical assistance be provided,
then the future of the online learning can be a big success.

The technical problems, and cost of online learning include having good internet
connectivity and a new generation device for accessing online learning, these all are limiting
candidate's or respondents’ intentions to use online learning. Online learning bringing isolation
fear in the respondents, interactions, becoming extrovert all are creating barriers to using
Online Learning.

Students are changing their mode from offline to online as online learning requires less time,
and it also allows flexibility of time. Online learning allows us to get access to class at any
time, at any place, and we can use any tools for doing online learning, as it has no time barriers.
We can make online learning more effective in terms of time by allowing the offline course to
be done in an online form, quick response or feedback from the faculty end.

Despite the significant findings, this study has some limitations. Limitations to the
generalisability of the findings, are caused mainly by the sample: Since sample size allows only
limited conclusions to be drawn about very small effects.
Despite some research design-related limits (limited sample, on-going studies),the findings and
related theorizations in this report may enable designers, faculty members as well as
administrators to better understand and act upon some of the basic issues surrounding the
design, redesign and delivery of blended online and offline learning.

So after going through the benefits and drawbacks of both online and offline learning , we can
safely infer that none of these two alone are the most perfect methods and we can conclude the
same from our analysis too.