Introducing block mode to first-year university students: a natural experiment on satisfaction and performance

Abstract

Statement of contributions: DL conceived the study, obtained ethical approval, undertook the literature review, analysis, and drafted all sections of the manuscript; CS navigated and helped interpret institutional data, undertook the SES and QILT analysis, and reviewed the draft manuscript; PP guided all aspects of the statistical analyses and use of the specific software applications utilised, and reviewed the draft manuscript; and MW expanded the literature review.Three authors are employed by the intervention institution.

Quantitative Comparison between Traditional and Intensive Face-to-Face Education through an Organizational Model

“…TFE presents a lack of flexibility in class schedule for students who need to reconcile their academic and professional life [3,5,14]. This can generate anxiety patterns in students [15] and especially affects students with a job [16] or family responsibilities [17,18]. According to Sprung and Rogerts [15], the balance between personal and professionaleducational life is an important antecedent of mental health of university students, and educational institutions should facilitate this balance to improve the university experience.…”

“…Intensive education is a variant of traditional face-to-face education. This style concentrates the teaching hours in compressed periods of time [17][18][19][20]. The credit has the same duration as in the TFE (25 h), although the percentage of face-to-face attendance of the students is lower, with a variable term between 10-30% of the time.…”

“…[21]. Given the growing demand of students for a model of these characteristics, some universities offer intensive face-to-face education programs (IFE) to allow non-conventional students to opt for face-to-face education [13,[16][17][18]20,22,23]. The intensive academic day generally covers 8 h a day [18,23] and includes all the training contents of the subject [17,18,23].…”

“…Given the growing demand of students for a model of these characteristics, some universities offer intensive face-to-face education programs (IFE) to allow non-conventional students to opt for face-to-face education [13,[16][17][18]20,22,23]. The intensive academic day generally covers 8 h a day [18,23] and includes all the training contents of the subject [17,18,23]. Therefore, the component of student attendance decreases, but without being eliminated, considering it a modality or educational style within face-to-face education [19,24,25].…”

“…There is a social responsibility of the institutions to offer quality training styles appropriate to each student profile [16][17][18] and to promote more efficient and innovative educational methods [1,38]. There is a lack of quantitative research that compares faceto-face education [7] and identifies its organizational and collaborative elements [12].…”