An exploratory investigation of the impact of surprise interviews with former graduates on online students learning in an introductory IT course

This study explored a unique approach to motivating online students in an introductory IT course. The authors conducted and videotaped surprise interviews with former business graduates and offered the recorded interviews to online business students enrolled in an introductory IT course. The authors then compared the academic performances of the students who watched the surprise interviews and those who did not. The study employed a mixed research methodology and found that students who watched the surprise interviews achieved significantly better performance than students who did not in all aspects of learning outcome assessment.