Persistence of Women in Online Degree-Completion Programs

By T. Müller. 2008

181 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although online courses at postsecondary institutions promise adults access, flexibility, and convenience, many barriers to online learning remain. This article presents findings from a qualitative case study, which explored the phenomenon of undergraduate and graduate women learners’ persistence in online degree-completion programs at a college in the Northeast of the United States. Research questions asked why women learners persisted or failed to persist, and how factors supporting or hindering persistence influenced learners. Interviews with a purposeful sample of 20 participants revealed the complexity of variables affecting learners’ persistence to graduation. Findings suggested that multiple responsibilities, insufficient interaction with faculty, technology, and coursework ranked highest as barriers to women’s persistence. Strong motivation to complete degrees, engagement in the learning community, and appreciation for the convenience of an online degree-completion option facilitated persistence.

Subfields: Education, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/686d8dc2003fc05d1a0b04bf3d97580bba7edde7

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In Education

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Exploring causal relationships among teaching, cognitive and social presence: Student perceptions of the community of inquiry framework (2010, background): “For example, “multiple responsibilities, insufficient interaction with faculty, technology, and coursework ranked highest as barriers to women's persistence” (Müller, 2008, p. 1) in online environments.”
Socio-emotional connections: identity, belonging and learning in online interactions. A literature review (2014, background): “Because flexibility around other work/life commitments is one of the main reasons for choosing distance study (Priest, 2007; Muller, 2008) this review will be largely focused on asynchronous communications, as these best support the demand for flexibility.”
Older, online and first: Recommendations for retention and success (2019, background): “Certainly, the higher proportions of older learners means that many within the online cohort are time-poor, juggling multiple responsibilities in their lives, such as family and work commitments, along with their studies (Greenland & Moore, 2014; Müller, 2008; Park & Choi, 2009; Tyler-Smith, 2006).”
Factors Associated With Student Persistence in an Online Program of Study: A Review of the Literature (2012, background): “Müller (2008) finds that when students are not satisfied with faculty or learning they are more apt to be less successful than their persistent counterparts.”
A review of online course dropout research: implications for practice and future research (2011, methodology): “…to take (Perry et al. 2008) a These studies provided empirical evidence of suggested strategies flexible, and self-directive to enable students to access and understand the content more easily (Bocchi et al. 2004; Ivankova and Stick 2007; Morris et al. 2005a; Müller 2008; Perry et al. 2008).”