Date of Award

12-1984

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Dr. Richard E. Munsterman

Second Advisor

Dr. Mary Anne Bunda

Third Advisor

Dr. John Lore

Abstract

Record numbers of nontraditional students are enrolling in colleges today. These students are being actively recruited in an effort to overcome a decrease in enrollments caused by the declining size of the pool of potential traditional 18-year-old students. To accommodate these nontraditional students, colleges have had to adjust their traditional class meeting time schedules. One such class meeting time schedule has been developed where the class meets in large blocks of time on weekends. Many educators have questions about the academic credibility and worth of this nontraditional weekend class meeting schedule. This question became the basis for a research study.

The purpose of this study was to compare the learning achievement of students enrolled in weekend scheduled classes to the learning achievement of those enrolled in the more traditional concurrently scheduled classes which met once each week.

To conduct the study, achievement test scores of a weekend group were compared to the achievement test scores of a traditional, concurrent group. There were three different classes with a comparable section of the same class in each of the two groups, making six class sections. An achievement test was given at the end of each class and the test scores were converted to a common metric, Z scores. The weekend group scores were compared to those of the traditional concurrent group.

The hypothesis of the study was that there was no difference found between the achievement of students enrolled in weekend classes and the achievement of students enrolled in the traditional concurrent classes. To test the hypothesis a two-sample t test was used with (alpha) of .20.

In this study the null hypothesis, which was the research hypothesis, was not rejected. The conclusion of the research was that there was no difference between the achievement of the weekend group and the traditionally scheduled group.

The study involved a small population in one college with nonquantitative based courses. Recommendations for future research suggests that the research design be used with larger samples and a variety of courses, groups, and class meeting schedules to establish external validity.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

Download

Share

COinS