Online summer courses offer opportunities to catch-up or stay on-track with course credits for students who cannot otherwise attend face-to-face summer courses. While online courses may have certain advantages, participation patterns and student success in summer terms are not yet well understood. This quantitative study analyzed four years of institutional data cumulating in 72,441 course enrollments of 23,610 students in 433 courses during summer terms at a large public research university. Multi-level logistic regression models indicated that characteristics including gender, in-state residency, admission test scores, previous online course enrollment, and course size, among others, can influence student enrollment by course modality. Multi-way fixed effects linear regression models indicated that student grades were slightly lower in online courses compared to face-to-face courses. However, at-risk college student populations (low-income students, first-generation students, low-performing students) were not found to suffer additional course performance penalties of online course participation.

在线暑期课程为无法通过其他方式参加面对面暑期课程的学生提供了补习或保持学分的机会。尽管在线课程可能具有某些优势，但对于夏季的参与模式和学生的成功还没有很好的了解。这项定量研究分析了四年的机构数据，在一所大型公立研究型大学中，总计有432项课程的23,610名学生在433项课程中入学。多级逻辑回归模型表明，包括性别，州内居住权，入学考试成绩，以前的在线课程注册和课程规模等特征，可以通过课程方式影响学生的注册。多方向固定效应线性回归模型表明，与面对面课程相比，在线课程的学生成绩略低。但是，未发现处于风险中的大学生群体（低收入学生，第一代学生，表现欠佳的学生）遭受在线课程参与所带来的其他课程表现惩罚。