ONLINE CLASS ACTIVITIES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF SUCCESS FACTORS IN POST-SECONDARY CURRICULUM

Stanley Self
Tamara Fudge
Linnea Hall
Purdue University Global

Adam Sullivan
Liberty University

ABSTRACT

How students and faculty find a meaningful connection in the online classroom is a
concern. This study of a Learning Management System feature seeks to accumulate a broader
spectrum of data and develop relevant metrics related to those data. The data and results may be
of interest to students, instructors and online course designers and developers. The metrics
include time spent in intra-class discussion forums, question and answer sessions in a “Virtual
Instructor’s Office,” time invested in homework type activities, time invested in the course by the
instructor and an aggregate measure of all other time invested in the online classroom by the
students. Student success is measured by the score earned by students on a 1,000-point scale. A
multiple regression analysis has been used to test the results using the various independent
variables. Based on the analysis, it is unclear how time invested in classroom peer-to-peer
interactions or asking the faculty questions relate to student success. Although these results may
appear to be inconclusive, they are valuable to the literature as a possible indicator of the
potential for further investigation.

Keywords: Education, online education, student success, student critical success factors