Increasing Success in Higher Education: The Relationships of Online Course Taking With College Completion and Time-to-Degree

2021/11/22 by Christian Fischer, Rachel Baker, Qiujie Li +2 · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Computer Science · #Online and Blended Learning #Online Learning and Analytics #Higher Education Research Studies

paper · pdf · doi:10.3102/01623737211055768

openalex publication_date 2021/11/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

Online courses provide flexible learning opportunities, but research suggests that students may learn less and persist at lower rates compared to face-to-face settings. However, few studies have investigated more distal effects of online education. In this study, we analyzed 6 years of institutional data for three cohorts of students in 13 large majors (N = 10,572) at a public research university to examine distal effects of online course participation. Using online course offering as an instrumental variable for online course taking, we find that online course taking of major-required courses leads to higher likelihood of successful 4-year graduation and slightly accelerated time-to-degree. These results suggest that offering online courses may help students to more efficiently graduate college.

Citations

• The Effects of Student Coaching
• Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects
• Dropout from Higher Education: A Theoretical Synthesis of Recent Research
• Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments
• Causal Inference
• Is It Live or Is It Internet? Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning

Cited by

• Distance education [wikipedia]

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