Perceived performance in Internet testing

With the growth of distance education, many issues pertaining to how students perform in this environment are surfacing. The differences between the environments may have pedagogical implications on the basic activities in education such as assessment. This paper provides the results of comparing the testing process between two sections of a graduate programming class, where one was an on-campus class and the other a distance class. The course content, instructor, syllabus, lecture materials, notes, assessments and semester (time of year) were the same. Both groups were surveyed to test their satisfaction with the testing procedure and with their perception of certain aspects of the social environment. While there was no difference in actual test performance, the results showed differences in perceived test performance. Two conjectures about possible causes underlying the difference and suggestions for possible future research end the discussion.