Date

11-2019

Department

School of Education

Degree

Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership (EdD)

Chair

Kevin D. Struble

Keywords

Dual Enrollment, Online Education, Persistence, Retention, Traditional Education

Disciplines

Education | Educational Leadership

Abstract

Dual enrollment and online education are two factors of education that have become prevalent over the past decade. This rapid growth has resulted in higher attendance rates, but also higher dropout rates. It is the students’ persistence to graduation that demands the attention of all stakeholders. There is an abundance of research showing the value of dual enrollment leading to student success at the collegiate level, but the purpose of this study is to differentiate between online and residential dual enrollment. This study used a causal comparative design to compare the two group means of first-year residential college students taking online dual enrollment courses or residential dual enrollment courses in high school. The research took place at a faith-based university. A survey was sent out to over 4,000 first-year residential students, creating a sample size of 222 students after removing unqualified participants. A t-test was used to determine that there was no significant difference in favorability scores between students taking online dual enrollment and residential dual enrollment. Prior research shows that the location of learning does not drastically affect the outcome, which is also the result of this study. It is apparent that the differences between online and face-to-face interaction continue to decrease with the advancement of technology. For future research, it is recommended to follow students through to graduation, as this study only looks at the favorability scores from an instrument predicting the likelihood to persist.

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