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Online education continues to evolve and grow dramatically at colleges and universities across the globe. Today’s society is comprised of people who are increasingly busy with work and family obligations and who are looking for more flexible and expedited avenues for higher education. Institutions seek to meet these new demands by offering online distance educational opportunities while increasing cash flow for their college. Unfortunately the pitfalls to this rush to meet online demand results in what some researchers assert are inadequate quality content and curriculum. Others indicate there are not significant differences in the outcomes from online learning compared with traditional face-to-face classes. Much of the research has been conducted on nonquantitative courses, quantitative courses with small sample sizes, or large sample sizes that are not controlled for quality of online content, delivery, or verification of learning. The purpose of this quasi-experimental ex-post-facto study was to compare student outcomes from two Principles of Accounting courses both delivered in two methods of instruction: traditional face-to-face (F2F) and an on-line asynchronous format. The online content for both courses was developed with assistance of academic technology professionals at the participating university. Student learning was measured as final course grade where all exams were administered by a testing center in a proctored environment. The sample size included 124 students from the online sections and 433 students from the traditional face-to-face sections. Eight research questions were examined using independent samples t-test for 6 of the analyses, ANOVA for 1 question, and multiple regression for predictors of mean final course grade. The results indicated students performed significantly better in the face-to-face classes than the online sections. Female students scored significantly higher than male students in both methods of instruction. ACT composite score, ACT math score, GPA, gender, and method of instruction all were significantly related to final course grade. Age was not a significant predictor of final course grade but in the online sections nontraditional students (age 25 and older) scored significantly higher than students under the age of 25.

ELM Resources, a not-for-profit, mutual-benefit corporation, provides web-based transmission and data translation services for student loan data between loan providers and schools/universities. This corporation has a relatively new training staff of five to seven employees and over 1,800 client organizations. Because of the heavy demands placed on the training staff, ELM training administrators sought alternatives to their current training program of onsite training and web conferencing. Blended learning was identified as one possible solution. In this project, blended learning is defined as using a combination of face-to-face training and technology-delivered training. By adding web-based, on-demand tutorials, along with other training media, ELM hoped to increase access to training while keeping costs low. This project explores the impact of these tutorials on ELM and its clients. Reported are an interview with the Director of Training and several surveys distributed to school staff, lenders, and ELM training specialists. A critique of the project addresses the need for future research to collect performance data. Evaluation results indicate that the changes to the training program have established a positive relationship between ELM and its clients, and have given ELM a definite competitive edge. The advantages especially noted in the evaluation results include the usefulness of the tutorials as both a reinforcement of previous training and a self-testing tool, their brief and highly visual format which teaches one process at a time, and the convenience in accessing and using the tutorials. Disadvantages include the tutorial's inherent impersonal nature, the loss of the ability to ask questions, and lack of optional narration. This paper discusses unanticipated benefits to the trainers, such as the use of the tutorials within face-to-face training sessions, and to other ELM staff members, including Help Desk personnel. The decrease in training-related Help Desk calls after the introduction of the training changes suggests a positive impact on learning.

The Center for Teaching and Learning, Independent Study, and the Department of French and Italian at Brigham Young University collaborated to develop the French 202 Website to be used with the French 202 course. Currently, the French 202 Website is used with the French 202 Independent Study course and with the traditional face-to-face course. This evaluation focused on the French 202 Website as it is used with the traditional face-to-face course. This evaluation was conducted in conjunction with the Center for Teaching and Learning at Brigham Young University (BYU). Based on the information collected, the evaluator found that (a) faculty used the website to supplement the face-to-face French 202 course, (b) students indicated that the website appears to function according to the criteria for this evaluation, and (c) students felt that because they used the website they were better able to achieve the learning outcomes of the course.

The term “deepfakes” refers to media content that has been manipulated using deep learning. This thesis project seeks to answer the question of how well humans are able to detect deepfakes. In particular, the project compares people’s ability to detect deepfakes between two different deepfake categories; face swap and lip sync. In order to achieve this, a perceptual user test was performed, in which 30 participants were given a number of lip sync, face swap and unaltered videos and were asked to classify which of them were unaltered and which of them were manipulated using deepfake technology. These results serve to fill in the gap in knowledge regarding perceptual user tests on deepfakes, for which only a small amount of research has been made. The results also serve to shed light on which types of deepfakes pose the biggest threat regarding the problem of malicious impersonation. The main conclusion from this study was that lip sync is likely harder for humans to detect than face swap. The percentage of correct classifications of lip sync videos was 52.7%, and the percentage of correct classifications of face swap videos was 91.3%. / Deepfakes är videor som har blivit manipulerade med hjälp av deep learning. Detta examensarbete utforskar huvudsakligen två olika kategorier av deepfakes, dessa två är: face swap och lip sync. Syftet med projektet är att svara på frågan: Hur bra är människor på att se om en video innehåller deepfakes eller inte? Dessutom ställs frågan: Vilken typ av deepfake mellan face swap och lip sync är svårare för människor att märka av? För att svara på dessa frågor genomfördes en användarsudie där 30 deltagare fick titta på ett antal lip sync, face swap och icke-manipulerade videor, och fick sedan försöka avgöra vilka av dom som var manipulerade och vilka som inte var manipulerade. Resultaten från den här studien hjälper till att fylla kunskapsklyftan som finns angående människors förmåga att upptäcka deepfakes, där bara en väldigt begränsad mängd studier finns. Resulaten kan också användas för att peka ut på vilka typer av deepfakes som utgör större hot angående lurendrejeri. Slutsatsen från studien var att lip sync är troligtvis svårare för människor att märka av än face swap, eller åtminstone för datasetet FakeAVCeleb. Andelen korrekta gissningar för lip sync videorna i studien var 52.7%, medan andelen korrekta gissningar för face swap var 91.3%.

Student participation in online courses has been growing steadily for the past decade, and the trend appears to continue the growth in this form of instructional delivery method for the foreseeable future (iNACOL, 2012). To date, little research exploring student success rates exists in the social studies. This particular study was conducted to examine what differences, if any, existed in the End-Of-Course (EOC) scores of 11th grade United States history students who took the course in a traditional, face-to-face format versus students who took the same course online through Florida Virtual School. For this study, proper permission was received from all interested parties, and a sample of 9,339 End of Course (EOC) examinations were taken from 36 high schools in a large, urban school district in Central Florida. All identifiable data were scrubbed from the sample. Due to the extremely small sampling of online students, the One-Sample Wilcoxon test was used on four research questions to compare students in the traditional, face-to-face versus online format and based on ethnicity, gender, and free-and-reduced lunch status. Overall, none of the One-Sample Wilcoxon tests indicated the presence of a significant difference among any subgroup-overall, White, non-White, female, male, high socioeconomic status, or low socioeconomic status. Therefore, none of the null hypotheses presented were rejected. Recommendations included replicating the study on a broader scale and conducting a qualitative study to examine the characteristics of online students, their similarities and differences, to those of students who attend class in a face-to-face format.

The use of virtual teams (VTs) in the workplace has increased rapidly as companies seek to coordinate the collaboration of geographically dispersed employees effectively. This study involved an experimental comparison of VTs and face-to-face teams engaged in coopetition. Coopetition occurs when a relationship is characterized by simultaneous cooperation and competition. This study differed from previous research because many previous studies of team coopetition place their focus on traditional face-to-face teams and fail to touch upon the intricacies of VT coopetition. Because of this, investigating the intricacies of coopetition among VT members is an essential addition to the large body of research on face-to-face teams. This study examined team coopetition through separate measures of competitiveness and cooperativeness. The constructs competitiveness and cooperativeness were measured separately instead of together on a single continuum. This method determined team members’ coopetitive proclivities, the balance between one’s tendency to perform behaviors directed toward achieving a self-serving goal or goals and one’s tendency to perform behaviors directed toward achieving a group-serving goal or goals within the context of a coopetitive relationship. Team members’ coopetitive proclivities were examined through a combination of videogame play and electronic surveys. All participants in this experiment were female. No significant differences between the coopetitive proclivities of virtual and face-to-face teams were found. We found that the ratings of competence that participants received from their partners tended to be lower under the virtual condition. We found that extroverted team members were more likely to cooperate. We also found that the ratings of competitiveness that participants received from their partners were negatively correlated with the ratings of desirability for future collaboration (i.e., team viability) that participants received from their partners. Further, it was determined that the ratings of cooperativeness that participants received from their partners were positively correlated with the ratings of team viability that participants received from their partners. Additional results indicated a positive relationship between team members’ self-reported levels of agreeableness and the ratings of competence that participants received from their partners. Results also indicated a positive relationship between team members’ self-reported levels of openness and the ratings of competence that participants received from their partners. This paper discusses the implications of these results and possible directions for future study.

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