Online classes have never been more popular at colleges and universities, but instructors continue to struggle to find ways to prevent students from dropping out. According to a new study from Kennesaw State University’s Coles College of Business in Kennesaw, Georgia, they shouldn’t bother trying.
Keeping students engaged in online classes is a growing concern for educators as the online education sector experiences rapid-fire growth. More than 4.6 million college students were taking at least one online class at the start of the 2008-09 academic year, according to the 2009 Sloan Survey of Online Learning. Yet the student dropout rates for online courses are 15 to 20 percent higher than those for traditional face-to-face classes, according to a 2007 study published in The Journal of Educators Online.
A group of six Coles professors noticed they too had the same problem when it came to online classes. For example, the online version of one popular business class, a prerequisite for entrance into Coles, had a spotty track record when it came to students completing the course. In the fall of 2008, only 55 percent of students managed to finish the class. In the spring of 2009, they decided to put seven well-known retention strategies to the test on two sections of the course.
Read the full article: Mission Impossible: Keeping Online Students From Dropping Out