Project RITE
Recipients
An Assessment of Factors Affecting Dropout of Students Enrolled in the University of Tennessee Online New College Bachelor's Degree Program
Download final report: PDFJeff Hoyer
Department of Communications, UT MartinAs online education becomes more popular and the field is maturing, attention is being focused on factors affecting completion of distance education since rates of non-completion as high as 50% are commonly reported in literature. Factors which have been reported in literature as affecting completion have been categorized into the areas of environment, design, technology, and learner motivation. This study involved a census of students who had enrolled but dropped out of the 2006 spring semester online courses offered through the University of Tennessee at Martin (n=78). The timeframe of the study was from January 20, 2006 through March 10, 2006. The study involved use of a one-shot questionnaire survey modified from an earlier published online class completion study. The questionnaire was designed using Dragon software so it could be made available for online distribution. Participants were notified by e-mail and asked if they would participate. Persons who did not respond to the first e-mail were e-mailed a second time and everyone was provided with a link to the questionnaire. Eighteen e-mails were returned as undeliverable resulting in a population of 60 which could respond to the sampling. Thirty three students completed the survey resulting in a 55% volunteer response rate for those students able to participate in the survey. Analysis using the Wicoxon Signed-Ranks Test revealed significance at the .05 level in four factors relating to motivation and in one factor relating to design. Additionally, a trend was noted whereby females had a higher drop rates than males.