Effects of course modality in summer session: Enrollment patterns and student performance in face-to-face and online classes

Highlights

• Large-scale study analyzing more than 72,000 enrollments in 433 courses.

• Student- and course-level factors can influence enrollment in online courses.

• Students perform slightly worse in online courses than in face-to-face courses.

• At-risk students are not at a greater disadvantage in online courses.

Abstract

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.

Introduction

Online learning and distance education are becoming an integral part of higher education in the United States. In 2003, only 15.6% of all degree-seeking U.S. undergraduate students had enrolled in at least one distance education class during their higher education career. As of 2014, more than a quarter of all undergraduate students (27.7% or 4.8 million students) had enrolled in at least one distance education class (Snyder, de Brey, & Dillow, 2016). Similarly, higher education administrators increasingly value online education as a critical component of long-term strategic plans for their institutions (Allen & Seaman, 2013). Advocates suggest that online learning might not only provide more cost-effective instruction but also increase access to learning opportunities and college completion for students (Shea & Bidjerano, 2014).

However, most research on college-level online course settings suggests that students do not perform as well in online courses compared to traditional face-to-face courses with respect to course completion, course grades, and subsequent college enrollment (Atchley, Wingenbach, & Akers, 2013; Bettinger, Fox, Loeb, & Taylor, 2017; Figlio, Rush, & Yin, 2013; Jaggars & Xu, 2016; Xu and Jaggars, 2011, Xu and Jaggars, 2013, Xu and Jaggars, 2014). These performance gaps are often attributed to student abilities in self-directed learning, which is particularly important in fully online course work to stay on pace with the course learning materials and objectives (Broadbent, 2017; Cho, Kim, & Choi, 2017; Firmin et al., 2014; Kizilcec, Pérez-Sanagustín, & Maldonado, 2017; Parkes, Stein, & Reading, 2015; You, 2016). Nonetheless, online courses can fulfill an important role to complement an institution's traditional face-to-face course schedule and to help advance students' academic success in higher education. For instance, colleges that offer online courses during summer terms might provide students who work full-time off-campus or students who temporarily moved to a different city a flexible opportunity to maintain or even accelerate their time-to-degree (e.g., Fish & Kowalik, 2009; Taylor & Doane, 2003).

While numerous research studies have compared the outcomes of either online courses with face-to-face courses or summer with non-summer courses across post-secondary contexts, the research base on the intersection of online learning and summer course learning remains thin. This study attempts to address this gap by examining student enrollment during summer terms and the effect of course modality on student performance. Consequently, this study is framed by the following three research questions:

Research question 1: What types of students enroll in college courses during summer terms?

Research question 2: What student- and course-level characteristics predict student enrollment in online courses (compared to face-to-face courses) during summer terms?

Research question 3: What is the impact of course modality on student course performance during summer terms?