The establishment of an asynchronous e-learning course in higher education – challenges and guidance to overcome them

Abstract

After the Corona period, the use of asynchronous e-learning settings has increased in higher education, including the Bachelor's degree program in Business Information Technology (BIT) at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). In autumn 2022 an asynchronous e-learning course was introduced for a compulsory finance module in the aforementioned program. The comparison of the grades achieved in this course before Corona in a face-to-face setting (F2F) and after Corona in an asynchronous e-learning setting showed that the students' grades increased notably. The literature review shows that asynchronous e-learning has the potential to increase students' learning success. Interestingly, in the second run of the asynchronous e-learning finance course, held in spring 2023, students' grades increased even further. At the same time, the standard deviation also increased. No changes were made to the learning environment, the course content, or the learning materials. The aim of this conference paper, which constitutes a continuation of the previously published work, is to find possible factors for the increased scores and the increased standard deviation comparing the two runs of the asynchronous e-learning finance course. The research is based on a literature review and the results of a survey of students' course evaluations. The identified factors and their consideration might help to improve comparable asynchronous e-learning settings.