In the January survey, 66% of the survey respondents identified as working students, and in the May survey 62% of working Baruch students reported taking hybrid/online class because it fit their work schedule. Yet, according to the 2014 CUNY Student Experience Survey, 52% of Baruch students reported that they did not have a job outside of school. This data indicates that a higher percentage of working Baruch students may be taking hybrid/online classes.
Additionally, the following bullet points imply that working students who answered the CTL Spring 2015 surveys work more hours than Baruch students as a whole.
- The 2014 CUNY Student Experience survey reveals that only 22% of Baruch students work more than 20 hours per week;
- 66% of CTL survey respondents reported working more than 20 hours per week.
- In the 2014 CUNY Student Experience survey, 8% of all Baruch students reported working more than 35 hours;
- The CTL survey indicates that 22% of Baruch students taking hybrid/online classes reported working over 40 hours per week.
The self-evaluation of working students in our surveys complicates the commonly held belief that working students suffer from lower academic performance than non-working students, particularly in hybrid/online classes. Working students were asked to provide a self-assessment of their performance in their hybrid/online course:
- Across all the working hours categories, most students estimated that they performed comparably in their hybrid/online classes and their face-to-face classes,
- 35% of students who worked over 40 hours per week estimated that they would perform better in their hybrid/online courses than in their face-to-face courses, and
- The highest percentage (29%) of students who thought they had performed worse in their hybrid/online class were the students who worked the least (1-10 hours).
The graph on the right details students’ responses in the May survey’s question about how working a specific number of hours per week affected their perceived performance in hybrid/online (H/O) classes, when compared to their face-to-face (F2F) classes. The goal of this question was to gain insight into working students’ perceptions of and confidence in their performance in hybrid/online courses. Since students filled out this question at the end of the semester, they likely had some sense of how they performed in the course and could recall the challenges and opportunities they faced in their classes. Since no two classes can ever be the same, no matter the mode, the comparison is difficult to assess, which may affect the credibility and transferability of this qualitative data.
The preliminary data suggests that working students believe that hybrid/online courses may benefit their performance. While more research on working students’ performance in hybrid/online classes is needed, it is clear that working Baruch students demonstrate interest in taking hybrid/online classes and that even students who work full-time have confidence in their ability to perform as well in hybrid/online classes as in face-to-face classes. Future surveys are needed to investigate whether or not students actually perform better and illuminate potential reasons behind any performance differences.
Next section: Student Expectations & Experiences in Hybrid/Online Classes