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Sienkiewicz, Jennifer Ann

Nutritional and Food Sciences

2005

MS

Distance education is instruction that occurs when time and/or location separate the instructor and the student. In the past, this was referred to as correspondence study. Today, however, use of the Internet has become a popular mode of delivery for distance education. As the need for life-long learning increases, more and more educators are turning toward Web-Based Instruction (WBI) to meet student needs. WBI offers many benefits to both educators and students, including accessibility, flexibility, and costeffectiveness. However, there is very little evidence that WBI facilitates the development of higher order thinking skills, and no studies have used Bloom's taxonomy to create valid and reliable evaluation instruments for assessing cognitive gains in an online course. The objectives of this study were to 1) create an exam that contains questions addressing the course objectives and the levels of the cognitive domain as defined in Bloom's taxonomy; 2) measure and compare the Web-based course to the lecture course by analyzing student performance within each level of the cognitive domain; and 3) measure and compare overall student attitudes in both groups. The Web-based course included a series of lessons that contained text, animations, videos, interactive quizzes, and the ability to print copies of the learning materials for each lesson. The course Website also included a discussion board and live chat room. Students in both groups took identical pretests, posttests, and attitude assessments. Cognitive gains were measured in five levels of Bloom's taxonomy of the cognitive domain: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, and evaluation. No significant differences were found in scores for any of the learning levels on the pre- and posttest. Student attitude survey results found that students enjoyed the course in the format that it was taken, but online students felt a lack of interaction with other students and found it more difficult to keep up with coursework. The results indicate that the Web-based course facilitates the development of higher order thinking skills as well as the traditional lecture-based course.