Student evaluation of teaching in the virtual and traditional classrooms: A comparative analysis

The present case study consists of the content analysis of anonymous student responses to open-ended evaluation of teaching questions submitted by 202 students for fully online and on-campus versions of the same graduate courses taught by the same professors over four academic years. Online courses received both more praise and more negative comments than did equivalent on-campus courses. The net result was a more negative rating for online courses. Findings suggest that the online course delivery medium introduced misalignment for some students between their preferred learning environment and the actual learning environment, notwithstanding student self-selection of the course delivery medium.