Accounting Students' Perceptions of Online Learning
Open Access
- Author:
- Kravitz, Aaron
- Area of Honors:
- Accounting
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Scott Collins, Thesis Supervisor
Orie Edwin Barron, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Accounting
Online Learning
Education
Zoom
Hybrid Learning
Flipped Classroom
student perceptions - Abstract:
- The entire world transitioned to online learning in 2020 because of social distancing restrictions stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic. This event marks a major paradigm shift in the way we educate our youth. For years prior to the pandemic, educators experimented with different types of online learning. Researched understood that online learning offers many unique advantages but were also aware of its many weaknesses. Often, educators used small components of online learning to supplement their traditional, in-person classes. However, in 2020, almost all learning became online learning. Rather than organizing a single class to conduct case studies of online learning, the entire world became a case study. At Penn State, three different forms of online learning were offered to students, including remote asynchronous, online synchronous, and hybrid / mixed mode online learning. Students at Penn State had diverse attitudes, perceptions, and opinions regarding these three forms, as well online learning in general. This study explores students’ perceptions, rather than student performance, because professors and instructors taught each form of online learning in a different way, even class by class. Therefore, measuring whether students performed better class by class would have been nearly impossible. However, measuring perceptions is a feasible study. This study focuses on accounting students’ perceptions because these students had the opportunity to learn in each of the three online learning environments. In this study, these perceptions uncovered themes that illustrate the major advantages and disadvantages of online learning. I believe that by understanding these student perceptions, educators can make improvements in both online and traditional, in-person classes to enhance the learning experience of students for years to come.