Biostatistics is not universally available in colleges/universities and is thus an attractive course to offer via distance education. However, evaluation of the impact of distance education on course enrollment and student success is lacking. We evaluated an "Introduction to Biostatistics" course at Harvard University that offered the distance option (Spring 2005).We assessed the effect on course enrollment and compared the grades of traditional students with non-traditional students, as well as with historical traditional students (Fall 2004). We further compared course evaluations from the inaugural semester with the distance option to evaluations from the prior semester. No evidence of dissimilarities was noted with respect to overall course grade averages or course evaluations.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education