Once on the fringes of higher education, online learning is now mainstream. Today, there are fewer entirely online or entirely face-to-face students; increasingly, college students are taking courses in a variety of instructional formats. How might this new reality of diverse modalities affect student success? Does a greater or lesser proportion…

This study investigates whether differences in learning styles exist between students in online and face-to-face (FTF) sections of political science courses taught by three instructors. Some studies suggest that student preferences regarding online or FTF formats are influenced by their preferred modes of learning. Independent learners, for…

What delivery modality is most effective in teaching undergraduate, political science research methods? Using systematically collected data from two academic terms and employing a quasi-experimental design, this paper explores variation in learning outcomes between face-to-face and distance-hybrid course offerings. Variation in the dependent…

Less than optimal student success in gateway courses figures prominently in college noncompletion. Past findings suggest that "U-Pace" instruction holds promise for increasing student success. However, all published studies of "U-Pace" instruction were conducted in the gateway course context of introductory psychology. The…

Do individual-level student characteristics affect appreciation for, and benefit from, the use of student response system technology? We investigate the usefulness of in-class electronic student response systems ("classroom clickers") to understand if it benefits some college students more than others. Specifically, we investigate…

This article reports on a study of student outcomes in a pair of matched courses, one taught face-to-face and one taught in a blended format, in which students completed most of the work online but met several times face-to-face. Learning objectives, course content, and pedagogical approaches were identical but the mode of instruction was…