Identifying motivation for enrollment in MOOCs has been an important way to predict participant success rates. But themes for motivation have largely centered around themes for enrolling in any MOOC, and not ones specific to the course being studied. In this study, qualitatively coding discussion forums was combined with topic modeling to identify…

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, online credit recovery (OCR) was the most popular use of distance learning in high schools in the United States. With high course failure rates during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, high schools have turned to OCR to help students recover lost credit. This study examined the potential consequences of…

Class enrollment sizes for online learning in higher education, a topic of persistent interest in the academic literature, impact student learning, pedagogical strategies, school finances, and faculty workload. Yet in the research literature, class size is addressed with insufficient specificity to provide enrollment direction. Seeking guidelines…

Online education is expanding within higher education. However, attrition rates for African American males enrolled in higher education in general, and in online courses specifically, is on the rise. Because the future of our nation depends on how well our educational institutions develop, nurture, and deploy talent, this study identified factors…

In an effort to characterize perceptions of learning community and engagement in relation to success for underrepresented populations of online learners at a public institution in southeastern United States, a survey was conducted in Spring 2016. The results of the survey were paired with institutional data to create a baseline engagement and…

Research has suggested that independent study students in online courses may benefit from engaging with a proximate community of engagement (PCE) and that students perceive that such engagement will help them succeed. Independent Study students were surveyed at the completion of their course to assess the level at which they actually interacted…

Online courses today give a broad, diverse population access to higher education. Despite postsecondary institutions embracing this opportunity, scholarly literature reveals persistent concern over low retention rates in online courses. In response to this concern, an explanatory sequential, mixed methods study was conducted in three phases at a…

It can be difficult to foster focused and effective communication in online discussions within large classes. Implementing protocols is a strategy that may help students communicate more effectively, facilitate their learning process, and improve the quality of their work within online discussions. In this exploratory research study, a protocol…

Students' re-enrollment in the subsequent semester after their first semester at a four-year institution is a strong predictor of retention and graduation. This is especially true for students who transfer from a community college to a four-year institution because of the many external or non-academic factors influencing a student's decision to…

This paper examines activity patterns, participant demographics, and levels of satisfaction in multiple MOOC offerings at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from August 2012-December 2013. Using the following guiding questions: "Who are MOOC participants, how do they participate, and were they able to get what they wanted out of…

This article examines the issue of whether linguistics is better suited for a face-to-face (F2F) environment than an online teaching environment. Specifically, it examines assessment scores and student perceptions of the effectiveness of an introductory linguistics course at an undergraduate state university that has been taught multiple times in…

There is well-documented evidence that online retention rates are lower than face-to-face retention rates. However, most past research on online retention focuses on student characteristics, with little knowledge existing on the impact of course type. This study uses a matched sample of 2,330 students at a large urban community college to analyze…