1 Can Web Courses Replace the Classroom in Principles of Microeconomics?

The proliferation of economics courses offered partly or completely on-line (Katz and Becker, 1999) raises important questions about the effects of the new technologies on student learning. Do students enrolled in on-line courses learn more or less than students taught face-to-face? Can we identify any student characteristics, such as gender, race, ACT scores, or grade averages, that are associated with better outcomes in one technology or another? How would the on-line (or face-to-face) students fare if they had taken the course using the alternative technology? This paper addresses these questions using student data from our principles of microeconomics courses at Michigan State University. I. The Courses This study analyzes examination performance of students in three different modes or technologies of instruction in principles of microeconomics. We call the modes of instruction live, hybrid (for reasons that will become clear), and virtual. Each of these modes of instruction employs different instructional materials, but they all have some features in common, such as the same textbook, Mankiw (2001), use of multiple-choice examinations, and e-mail and course web sites for communication. The live course, taught in two sections by Liedholm in Fall 2000, met face-to-face for three class hours per week. Although the classes were large, the instructor directly engaged them in the learning process by using animated PowerPoint slides, videos, and group demonstrations, and by calling on individual students. 2 Brown taught the hybrid course in Fall 2000. It supplemented face-to-face lectures of two class hours per week with a variety of on-line materials. Most important of these on-line materials was an extensive collection of interactive, collaborative practice materials called Problems in Microeconomic