BECE. Newsletter 

BECE, Vol.10, No.1, 2022 1348 

 

 

 

 

Differences in Instruction Efficacy between On-

Campus and Online Teaching 

By Yang, C., Cheng, B. D., & Zheng, Y. 

Correspondence to: Cheng, B. D., Beijing Forestry University, China. E-mail：
baodongcheng@163.com  

HE study, published in China Higher Education Research, takes 1,630 

undergraduates enrolled in 2019 and 2020 in University X as analysis 

sample. It conducts an empirical analysis of differences in instruction effica-

cy between on-campus and online teaching from the perspectives of class in-

teraction, teaching atmosphere and student characteristics, and examines the 

influencing mechanism of online teaching efficacy. The propensity score 

matching method (PSM) is employed to analyze the differences in instruction 

efficacy and the degree of difference. In addition, the Poisson regression 

model is used to examine the factors influencing online teaching efficacy. 

The findings are as follows. 

 There is a significant difference in instruction efficacy between 

on-campus and online teaching. The teaching patterns have a 

moderately strong influence on the test scores. Other interfering 

factors controlled, the online group score an average of 3.84 

points lower than the on-campus group. 

 Class interaction is an important factor affecting the instruction 

efficacy, and the intensity of interaction has a significant positive 

impact on grades. Teachers can significantly improve the efficacy 

of online teaching by adopting various interactive methods such 

as audio and video live broadcasting and increasing the frequency 

of interaction with students. 

 The characteristics of teaching soft environment have certain in-

fluence on instruction efficacy. It is found that the efficacy of 

online teaching in experimental class is stronger than that in ordi-

nary classes. Moreover, the relevance of the courses to students’ 

majors has a significant impact on their academic performance. In 

other words, students are more likely to have better academic per-

formance in courses with higher relevance to their majors than in 

those with lower relevance to their majors. 

T 

mailto:baodongcheng@163.com


 

BECE, Vol.10, No.1, 2022 1349 

 Instruction efficacy is also affected by the individual characteris-

tics. For instance, the efficacy of online teaching is lower for stu-

dents in remote areas than for average peers, limited by the un-

derdeveloped network infrastructure; It is also weaker for foreign 

students than for the average. 

 Statistically, teaching software, teachers' experience, students' 

genders and the ways of enrollment (whether enrolled by uniform 

exams) and other factors have no significant impact on students’ 

academic achievements. 

Based on the research findings, the study suggests that at the under-

graduate education level, online teaching should be applied cautiously rather 

than replacing on-campus teaching completely; Try not to select students in 

remote areas as subjects for online teaching experiment as they may have dif-

ficulty in adapting themselves to comprehensively electronized teaching; In 

online teaching, teacher-student interaction should be attached more im-

portance to form a decentralized two-way communication pattern and the 

relatively equal teacher-student relationship typical in network teaching be 

fully utilized to promote students' exploration ability in their pro-active pur-

suit of knowledge. 

 

Source: China Higher Education Research, 2021(12):23-29.