From Number Crunching To Organizational Leadership: Can Distance Education Adequately Handle The Range Of Graduate Business Classes?

Abstract

With distance education delivery technology improving almost continuously, many Universities are seeking out distance education opportunities to expand their programs.   We seek to examine the effectiveness of the distance delivery approach across the range of types of courses offered in MBA programs – from the organizational leadership classes to the more quantitative “number crunching” classes.   Student performance in several types of MBA courses was evaluated as a result of presenting the same material on-campus (synchronously) and via distance education (asynchronously) in three different kinds of graduate business courses; a course in organizational leadership, an analytical course in managerial economics, and a quantitative methods course.   A number of individual variables (e.g., GMAT scores, undergraduate GPA) were included as explanatory factors regarding student performance.   Using multiple hierarchical regression analysis, the asynchronous distance delivery model was determined to have no adverse impact on student performance across all of these different types of MBA courses, indicating that indeed distance education techniques can adequately handle this broad range of graduate business classes.