Characteristics of students who enroll and succeed in psychology Web-basedclasses

This study compared the cognitive-motivational and demographic characterist ics of students enrolled in 3 Web-based sections of Psychological Statistic s with their counterparts in 3 conventional (face-to-face) sections of this course. No demographic differences were found; however, cyberstudents exhi bited a greater external locus of control than conventional students. The a uthors also investigated whether there were any predictors of student perfo rmance in Web courses. Measures of on-line course activity (e.g., homepage hit rate), a high need for cognition, and an internal locus of control were predictive of cyberstudent success. The authors discuss the implications o f these results for instructors who are considering the design and implemen tation of Web-based classes.