Assessing the impact of the online learning portal on student performance in a business/marketing course

This paper investigates whether a statistically significant relationship exists between student interaction with the course website and student's overall performance in the course. This is important since universities around the world have invested heavily in online education assuming online education practices benefit student learning outcomes. Using the online tracking system in Blackboard, the time spent by each student on a range of specific online assessment activities in the course is measured. These measures are then used along with student characteristics to predict the final student mark in the course. The evidence suggests time spent on online activities is generally associated with higher assessment performance.