Differences in the Performance of Male and Female Students in Partially Online Courses at a Community College

Many scholars argue that female students are more motivated than their male counterparts. This study examines evidence from 435 students, 237 males and 198 females, in 19 partially online Introduction to Marketing and Marketing Research classes taught by this researcher at an urban community college. The study spans 10 semesters from fall 2012 to spring 2017. In this retrospective study, female students outperformed male students on the following measures: (a) Students' final course grades adjusted to remove extra credit grades, (b) Students pre-semester cumulative Grade Point Averages adjusted to remove extra credit grades, and (c) Scores on three early semester extra credit assignments assigned to all students. The data suggest that female students are more likely to be self-regulated learners - more disposed to adopt a proactive disposition to their studies - than male students. But, this study does not include psychometric data. Consequently, the proposition that female students are more self-regulated learners than male students is only a hypothesis that emerges from this analysis. Given that the data are not normally distributed, the analysis was conducted using nonparametric test: Chi-Square and Kruskal-Wallis H.