Abstract

The purposes of this study were to investigate and compare the effects of Internet-based teaching and learning systems and traditional instruction on learners in the areas of quality of students’ term papers, homework, reference sources, analytical ability, synthesis and summarization of information, the costs of learning through the Internet (tuition fees not included), and time used for study.

The samples were 80 graduate students randomly selected from the class of 4 subjects registered from the second semester of academic year 2000 to the first semester of academic year 2002. They were divided into 4 control groups and 4 experimental groups.

The control groups studied with traditional instruction. The experimental groups studied with teacher-prepared instruction programs on the Internet-based system.

The instruments used in this study were two evaluation forms, an on-line test, and questions posted on the Internet-based systems. Data were analyzed by using a one-way t-test for independent samples.

The results indicated that there was no negative effect on the learners. The scores of experimental groups were not significantly higher than the scores of the control groups in the area of quality of students’ term papers, homework, reference sources, and analytical ability, synthesis and summarization of information.

For the study costs, the experimental groups did not significantly spend more than the control group. However, the experimental groups spent significantly less time than the control groups. It suggests that the teacher’s role, changed for the Internet-based instruction, did not change the learning outcome of the students.