Online Student Success: Making a Difference by Beyrer - Article Example

 Online Student Success: Making a Difference by Beyrer Introduction The article entitled “Online Student Success: Making a Difference” (Beyrer, 2010) is written by a Distance Education Coordinator at a Community College in California which has over 12,000 students. It is very apparent that the author is enthusiastic about online learning, and that he is proud of the astonishing expansion in this type of learning, from 376 online enrollments in 2001 to 5,289 enrollments in 2010, an increase of 1,307% in nine years. (Beyrer, 2010, 89). The aim of the article appears to be to promote a particular program called “OSS” an acronym easily confused with products related to Oracle student management systems, but actually here referring to an in-house study skills program designed to help students come to terms with the technology and learning methods that online teaching requires them to master. The article describes a retrospective analysis of student performance, comparing those who attended the class-based and voluntary OSS program, and those who did not. The study finds, unsurprisingly perhaps, that those who attended the program performed better in their online classes, than those who did not, and suggests that more work needs to be done in identifying the students who would most benefit from this support program, and how to encourage them to take the classes. Analysis The study starts with a description of community college and the features of the OSS program, namely a one unit course in the second term, and lasting six weeks. It then considers some of the literature on the subject of preparing students for online learning, and observes that the focus is all too often on the delivery methods that instructors choose, and the capabilities of the different kinds of technology available. In short, the author advocates a student centered approach and consideration of motivational factors, emotional intelligence, and all of the attributes that different learners bring to their studies, and he notes that there has been very little work done so far on the preparation of students for online learning. The data at the heart of this study consists of two different types. There was a historical data set, taken from the student record system, and a specially designed survey, conducted by the author. The means of survey delivery was the Blackboard system, which had some gaps in it, and made it difficult to acquire full quota of responses. The historical data set reports on the 78 students (out of 5,147) who took the OSS program and were successful, as well as the 52 who were unsuccessful and the 45 who dropped out before the program assessment. The timescale is two academic years, from 2003 until 2005. There are comments on gender and ethnic origin variables, highlighting for example that African American students were the largest ethnic group among the OSS unsuccessful, but not commenting on why this was the case, or clearly explaining the relative demographic figures for different ethnic groups. Female students appear also to be over-represented, but in this case there is a clear correlation with the global figures for the whole college. In general the compilation of the data into the tables is excellent, with many details and potential for further comment. Much of it is left for the reader to figure out, however, without assistance from the author. Percentages are cited, and different categories listed, but there is little comment on what it all means. The survey data provides largely positive and somewhat superficial student ratings on the usefulness of the OSS program, and this may well have been caused by a bias in the sample towards recent attendees on the program. The inclusion of freely written student feedback was an interesting addition to the data, especially since one student wrote “It’s been a while. Prof [author] was excellent”. This comment reveals that the author was himself the program deliverer (presumably also its creator, though neither of these points are made absolutely clear in the main text) and this raises an issue of researcher objectivity. There is always a danger of bias creeping into a study if the same person delivers an input, collects responses, and then analyzes the results. There is a possibility, for example, that students will write positive comments to please their instructor, and this can seriously compromise the results. Conclusion The good points about this article are its enthusiasm and its thoughtful attempt to understand what effect a particular program is having, and make sure its benefits are targeted at those students who most need it. One question which was not considered, and which is rather fundamental to the whole topic, is the reason, or reasons, why so many thousands of students chose not to take up the offer of the OSS program. Another question is the high drop out and failure rate, which no doubt is connected with the voluntary nature of the program, but this could have been looked at more critically. To his credit, however, the author has made a good job of promoting greater attention to student needs, and he argues convincingly for an expansion of preparatory programs like this one, to ensure that community college students can gain access to the higher levels of education that so often are out of their reach because they are delivered online and require quite advances learning skills. The author openly shares the content of this OSS program, and the rather depressing take-up rates that it currently has, in order to press home the message that more needs to be done. He has a sensible approach, advocating that the class needs to be targeted, and not just delivered to everyone, since many students already have the skills they need to cope well in a technology driven environment. It is the less advantaged and the less confident students who need this class most, and this article was a useful reminder of that. This is a good article, with important ethical questions underlying the study, and dealing with a community college cohort. It highlights fundamental issues that arise even before students start to take up online programs, and this is an essential dimension which all educators need to be aware of. Works Cited Beyrer, G. M.D. (2010 Online Student Success: Making a Difference. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching 6 (1), 89 –109. . Read More