Studying Together, Staying Enrolled: Evidence From a Peer-Interaction Intervention in Community College Online Courses

• In Event: Improving Student Engagement and Achievement in Online Learning Settings

Abstract

Asynchronous online learning offers flexibility and is an increasingly critical modality in higher education, but it substantially reduces the spontaneous peer interactions through which students ask questions, exchange knowledge, and develop a sense of belonging in traditional classrooms. Although peer interaction is long recognized as core to online learning, few institutional strategies intentionally organize students’ social experiences in online courses, a gap especially consequential at open-access institutions, where work and family responsibilities make sustained peer interaction difficult to establish on its own. We evaluate whether intentionally organizing the social environment of asynchronous online courses can improve student persistence and successful course completion without changing course content or pedagogy. Specifically, we examine a semi-structured peer-interaction intervention that organizes students into study-together groups based on shared availability, making sustained collaboration feasible for students with competing time demands. Using administrative data from a statewide community college system and a quasi-experimental design, we estimate the intervention’s effects across four fully online asynchronous community college courses. The intervention increased students’ likelihood of remaining enrolled through course end and successfully completing the course, though effects on course grades were smaller and less consistent. Interview data suggests greater peer accountability, knowledge exchange, and social connection help explain these improvements. Although evidence comes from a single institution and a limited number of treated course sections, the findings provide suggestive evidence that intentionally designing the social organization of asynchronous courses may serve as a low-cost and scalable way to improve persistence and course completion in online higher education.

Author

• Jenny Lee, University of California, Irvine
  Presenting Author