Research question: Are students more productive online at home or face to face on campus?
My intended topic for this research task is surrounded around productivity and the levels of productivity students encounter based on their working environment. Do students feel more productive at home in an online working space or face to face on campus in a class or library?
First we must discuss the concept of productivity in order to relate it to my research and to understand the relevancy of this topic to uni students. As discussed by Tony Robbins the classic definition of productivity is “a way to measure efficiency’ more specifically “getting the results you want with less time and effort”. This can directly relate to why the environment in which we work in can increase or decrease productivity levels.
From my experience moving online in 2020 due to the covid pandemic has greatly affected the levels of productivity surrounding uni work. Although online education has its perks, making it possible for students across the globe to continue to obtain a quality education. Personally having to study and learn in my room a space previously dedicated to relaxing and leisure, full of distractions makes me so unmotivated to put my head down and work. However on campus a dedicated property to education allowed me to be in a working zone therefore achieving so much more. I know many students feel the same way however some feel the opposite. Reason being why this topic is timely, relevant and achievable within our current surroundings.
I set up a poll survey on twitter to gain an understanding of how BCM212 felt about their productivity levels based on the working environment. The following statistics were recorded after 3 days of the poll being up.
I expected a mostly 50/50 response based on my previous understanding from fellow uni friends. I was pleasantly surprised to see 60% of the small number of BCM candidates feel the same way I do. These results made me excited to find out more personally and from a larger group of fellow BCM212 candidates why they feel the way they do and opened the door to my primary research data.
Furthermore, as found in a comparative analysis article of student performance in an online versus face to face environment. Class room teaching is discussed as a well established instructional medium that has been refined over many centuries. Therefore holding numerous benefits not found in its online counterpart.(Xu and Jaggers, 2016) I perceive these values could directly relate to productivity levels of students at Wollongong.
On the other hand a survey by Mercer found that Ninety-four percent of 800 employers surveyed said that productivity was the same as or higher than it was before the pandemic, even with their employees working remotely. Although this survey was not conducted on university students the productivity levels online versus face to face have still been measured.
Moreover this survey of 5000 workers across Australia, UK ,France and Germany found that productivity measured in time – 38% of candidates worked longer hours online, 19% said that they worked less and 43% said they worked around the same time. (Boddy, 2020) This is another piece of data indicating that productivity levels are highly individual and will depend on a number of factors.
The data that I have read and analysed so far whilst researching my topic indicated that learning online or on campus definitely can affect the productivity of students. I think there is a lot of opportunity to delve deeper and understand why Wollongong students, specifically BCM212 may feel more productive depending on the learning environment.
References;
Maurer, R , 2020, ‘Study finds productivity not deterred by shift to remote work’, HR news, Viewed 20 March 2020
Boddy, N, 2020, ‘Its more productive to work from home’ , Financial Review, weblog post, viewed 20 March 2020
https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/careers/it-s-more-productive-to-work-from-home-20200401-p54fwc
Robbins, T, na, ‘what is productivity, really?’ , Tony Robbins online blog, weblog post, Viewed 20 March 2020
Xu, D and Jaggars, S, 2016, ‘Performance gaps between online and face-to-face courses: differences across types of students and academic subject areas, ‘ J. Higher Education, Pp. 633–659
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomp.2019.00007/full#B37
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