Atchley, Thomas Wayne (2010-08). Comparison of Course Completion and Academic Performance in Online vs. Traditional Courses. Doctoral Dissertation. Thesis uri icon

abstract

  • Enrollment in online courses has outpaced overall university enrollment for the

    past several years. The growth of online courses does not appear to be slowing. The

    purpose of this study was to examine the origins of online education at Tarleton State

    University, to compare course completion and student academic performance between

    online and traditional courses, and to develop a predictive model for students' successful

    completion of online courses. Archival data from the Tarleton student records system

    was collected using the Structured Query Language. Descriptive statistics were used to

    analyze student characteristics. Chi-square analysis was used to determine if significant

    differences existed between students enrolled in online and traditional courses when

    comparing course completion and academic performance. Analysis found significant

    differences existed in both course completion and academic performance for students

    enrolled in online vs. traditional courses. Additional analysis indicated significant

    differences existed in course completion by course discipline. A predictive model was

    created using binary logistic regression and included the predictor variables age, student classification, term course load, and cumulative GPA. The final model correctly

    predicted successful completion of 85.5 percent of all cases.

publication date

  • August 2010