Beyond Flexibility: Why Students Choose Online Courses in Community College

• In Event: Unpacking Online Outcomes: Applying Research to Improve the Online Community College Learning Experience

Abstract

In order to scale online learning offerings appropriately, community college administrators need a stronger understanding of their students’ demand for online courses. Recent studies of students’ course-taking patterns across the Virginia and Washington public community college state systems indicate that nearly half of students take at least one online course across the first four or five years of college (Jaggars & Xu, 2010; Xu & Jaggars, 2011). Yet few take all their courses online; for example, among students entering Virginia community colleges in the fall of 2008, only 3 percent took all their courses online in their first semester, and throughout their college career, most “online” students maintain a mix of online and face-to-face course enrollments (Jaggars & Xu, 2010; Xu & Jaggars, 2011). It is not clear, however, whether students prefer this mix-and-match strategy, or whether they would prefer to take more courses online and are thwarted by a lack of available offerings.

Several previous surveys and studies have established that increased student access, convenience, and flexibility is a primary driver behind institutional expansions of online course programming (e.g., Allen & Seaman, 2008). Yet the argument that “student flexibility should be maximized” applies equally to all programs and courses, providing little guidance to colleges in terms of which types of courses are a high versus low priority for online conversion. Moreover, taken to its logical extent, the flexibility argument implies that colleges should convert as many course sections as possible to the online setting, leaving few (if any) face-to-face sections to choose from. However, it is certainly not clear whether most students would prefer this state of affairs.

In this paper, we draw on findings from the project “Enhancing Online Course Outcomes: An Exploration of Teaching & Learning in Virginia” to address the questions: What types of courses do students prefer to take online? Why do students prefer to take these courses online rather than face-to-face? Would they prefer to take all their courses online, or do they prefer a mix of online and face-to-face courses?

Preliminary impressions from the field imply that students appreciate the flexibility of online learning, and most want to take at least one online course per semester. However, flexibility is not the only factor that influences their online course choice. Most students are not interested in taking all their courses online, and several indicated that they are particularly uninterested in taking certain types of subjects, such as math, online. Qualitative coding of the data is ongoing; our qualitative analysis will delve more deeply into the reasons why students prefer to take some courses online while they prefer to take others face-to-face. Results will provide insight into how community colleges can plan their expansion of online course offerings more strategically.

Authors

• Shanna Smith Jaggars, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Nikki Edgecombe, Teachers College, Columbia University