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Non-Participanting Online Students
Non-Participants Online Courses
The Case against Non-Participating Online Students
The Case against Non-Participating Online Students
With dropout rates 10 to 20% higher than bricks-n-mortar classes, the future success on online educational programs will depend on lowering these rates (reviewed by Nagel, Blignaut, and Cronje, 2009). The success of online classes has been shown to depend on student-instructor and student-student interactions, which are made more difficult by the long-distance nature of classes conducted over the internet. However, the difficulties associated with online classes are compensated for by opportunities to engage in prolonged online discussions with peers and instructors. The potential benefits of an interactive online learning environment therefore argue in favor of further research into what does and does not work and then making the necessary changes to improve educational outcomes.
Towards this goal, Nagel and colleagues (2009) monitored the experiences of students between the ages of 30 and 50 who were enrolled in a participatory online class.Students were required to produce individual and collaborative work during the 8-week course. Outcome measures depended on student engagement through postings, private student blogs, quizzes, a reflective essay, completion of feedback questions a month after course completion, and instructor observations. Since these outcome measures are both quantitative and qualitative in nature, this was a mixed methodology study.
Based on final student performance in the course, students were allocated to three groups for statistical purposes: Fail (N = 6), Pass (N = 9), and Distinction (N = 6) (Nagel, Blignaut, and Cronje, 2009). Using the Kruskall-Wallis non-parametric test, the authors showed significant differences between the three student groups based on the number of times a student clicked on course webpage material (hits), postings made, replies made, collaboration scores by….....