Essential knowledge for academic performance: Educating in the virtual world to promote active learning

Education has traditionally focused on the importance of content, and has guided curriculum design according to this principle. While content knowledge is important, to excel in the labor market today graduates need to develop procedural knowledge, with greater emphasis on capacity development for transferable skills. This need is amplified by emergent technologies, which increase the demand to develop knowledge in this domain. To disentangle and measure the impact of content and procedural knowledge on academic achievement, the study occurred in a virtual setting. Based on the findings, we provide recommendations for course designers and course developers to improve students" performance. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.