Abstract
Post-COVID-19, many, if not most, college and university instructors teach both online and face-to-face, and, given that online courses historically have higher attrition rates, designing and facilitating effective online courses is key to student retention. Students need online and on-campus courses that are well designed and facilitated, but even well-designed classes can be ineffective if students feel lost in the course or disengaged from the instructor. We surveyed 2,007 undergraduate students at a public, metropolitan university in the United States about the best and worst classes they had taken at the university. The resulting data revealed important consistencies across modalities—such as the importance of clear instructions and instructor availability. However, students responded that instructors matter more in face-to-face courses, where they can establish personal relationships with students, whereas assignments “stand in” for instructors in online classes. These findings support the need for increased faculty professional development in online course design and facilitation focused on student experience as well as faculty expertise.
Highlights
IntroductionEffective communication and instructor availability are important for both face-to-face and online classes
Some elements of good teaching are not modality-dependent
About two thirds of respondents told us about a face-to-face class and about one-third told us about an online class
Summary
Effective communication and instructor availability are important for both face-to-face and online classes. Differ by modality: technology access, contact hours, amount and type of written communication, and student control of the learning process. Beyond instructor and student issues lie problems outside of anyone’s control, such as the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. As research by Glazier et al (2019) indicates, the more online courses a postsecondary student takes, the less likely they are to succeed (see Shea & Bidjerano, 2018). Studies indicate that the most common factors impacting online student retention are student motivation and faculty/student interaction or engagement (Seery et al, 2021). Our research questioned whether we could apply what we know of faculty/student interactions from face-to-face education to inform our online pedagogy and improve retention
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