The Impact of Contact Sessions and Discussion Forums on the Academic Performance of Open Distance Learning Students

This study investigated the impact of face-to-face contact sessions and online discussion forums on the academic performance of students at an Open Distance Learning (ODL) university (N = 1,015). t-Tests for independent samples indicated that students who attended a written assignment preparation contact session performed significantly better in the written assignment than those students who did not attend this contact session [t(813) = 4.64, p = 0.00]; students who attended an examination preparation contact session did not perform significantly better in the examination than those students who did not attend this contact session [t(892) = 1.12, p = 0.26]; while students who used an online discussion forum performed significantly better in the final examination than those students who did not use this forum [t(1,013) = 4.04, p = 0.00]. More...