2.6 STUDENT DROPOUT
2.6.2 Student dropout in an ODL environment
to the heterogeneity of descriptions of ‘student dropout’, it is challenging to frame a profile of an emblematic student who dropped out of studies. For this reason, in this study and in response to Lee and Choi’s (2011, p. 603) proposal of a definition attuned into a particular context in mind, the inclusion criteria for the sampling of participants are founded on the following measures of suitability for partaking into the study - that is, whether a student has…
deregistered (cancelled) the module for any reason;
failed to reregister the module the following year;
never wrote or submitted the examination portfolio;
changed the module (deregister and register for an alternative module);
changed the institution of learning to study at another higher education institution.
Constructed from the above criteria, the construct ‘dropout’ refers to the following:
a student who did not register a yearly module in the following year; or was absent from an examination; or never submitted an examination portfolio; or have deregistered the module for whatever reason; or have transferred studies to another higher education institution for any reason.
that higher education institutions, especially open and distance education institutions that prevalently offer online courses, has to adjust with the pace at which the technological space is changing. Dropout incidence has been widely recorded in literature as, partly, a negative effect of the emergence of online form of education.
Both online distance education studies, which are centred on student dropout at an undergraduate level, and those that are based on postgraduate level of educational programmes sufficiently exist in the body of literature within the field of education.
However, many of these studies dealt with student dropout at an undergraduate level as opposed to dropout at a postgraduate level. Although not to an adequate fraction, dropout at the postgraduate level has been attended to, but a bigger stake of the studies explored the phenomenon at a masters and doctoral level and sporadically on lower-postgraduate level. Unique to previous research is that this study focuses on student dropout at lower (honours) postgraduate level, with a goal to develop an all- embracing and responsive support framework for honours students who are enrolled in open and distance education. An extensive review of literature, undergone in this study, signifies that it appears that there had been no support framework developed from lower-postgraduate students, yet the dropouts continue to occur at that level.
Thus, this study seeks to address such a lacuna. A comparative analysis by Pierrakeas et al (2004) on student dropout at an undergraduate module of a Bachelor degree in Informatics with a postgraduate module of a Master’s degree in education at a Greek distance education university serves as an epitome.
Across the entire globe, in open and distance learning institutions, teaching and learning instructions are usually aided by online technologies, which may pose a challenge to students who are unable or less able to use them. Such online systems must always be effective if institutions want to realise an increased student success proportion. Institutions must therefore measure their extent of their responsiveness and make changes accordingly. In the view held by Willging and Johnson (2004, p.
115), the effectiveness of online facilities is best measured by the rate at which students drop out of their studies.
The advent of online communication tools, particularly the internet and the variety of its applications, as well as the quick advancement in the broader technological environment, has reshaped how universities conduct their businesses and communicate with their students. Online communication tools have introduced e-
learning, a form of learning that require students to have access to the public internet so that they are able to access study materials, and to communicate with their tutors, lecturers, their peers and administrative officers. This, as Minnaar (2011) puts it, helps students get support, personal meaning, knowledge (p. 483) and positive learning experiences. Despite the fact that online learning appears to have presented many benefits, both to the students and the academic institutions, there are many challenges that are associated with an online form of learning. For example, Minnaar’s (2011) study that focused on support for students who are enrolled in online modules in order to develop an exploratory student support model for them identified three themes that relate to intervention in e-learning modules. Those were a human contact, a panic attack (pedagogy) and technical problems (p. 483). These challenges are determined by, among other variables, the fast growing and changing technological and pedagogical spaces in which the process of learning is altering from lecturer-to-student into a networked student-to-student model (Minnaar, 2011, p. 484).
Students studying through ODL institutions encounter challenges and only the fittest students are able to endure until they successfully complete their degree programmes.
Many students who encounter some difficulties usually cease their studies, voluntarily (For example, those who chose to transfer the degree programmes to study in other academic institutions) or involuntarily (for example, when the university deregister those who performed below the minimum regulation or standard put in place) (Murray, 2014, p. 1). This is what is referred to in this study as the ‘student dropout’. The dropout challenge in open and distance-learning mode of higher education has been the catalyst for the current volume of studies seeking to encourage student retention and to preclude the rise of student dropout. CHE (2008), for example, compared the graduation rates of conventional face-to-face with that of non-face-to-face institutions within the minimum prescribed timeframe to complete a three-year programme and found that 91% of students in non-contact higher education institutions needed additional two years to accomplish their studies. Several inquiries into the student dropout aspect in higher education context have received an acceptable and a more resounding focus. The works of Letseka and Maile (2008), Sittichai (2012), Tinto and Engstrom (2008), Lockhart (2004), Vignoles and Pawdthavee (2009) are some of examples. As observed by Grau-Valldosera and Munguillon (2014, p. 290), myriad of
contemporary studies were focused on factors that influence the student dropout in online higher education.
In spite of sufficient attention devoted to the enormous student attrition problem within and from the higher education landscape, there is an increasing concern that many students drop out during an early phase in their studies. Documented cases that are congruent to this assertion are deeply marked in the literature. For instance, in the study aimed at finding out whether or not an improved student commitment leads to school attrition in the context of vocational education and training (VET), Cabus (2015, p. 599) contends that the rate of dropout incidences an early in courses is the highest in the learning process. In a similar vein, Jennison and Johnson’s (2004, p. 2) study to determine the extent to which an alcohol abuse can impact on the student dropout, arrived at a complementary inference that confirmed the recurring incidence of attrition at an early phase in the learning process in higher education domain.
The higher education terrain in which open and distance education (ODL) forms part, is changing swiftly with the growing practice of online technologies for teaching and learning purposes as a vehicle for the delivery of education. Astoundingly, despite experiencing progressive increased student enrolment rate that is largely influenced by advantages offered by the existing advanced technological environment, institutions of higher learning remain victims of student dropout occurrences. This study centres its focus on student attrition in an ODL context in order enhance an understanding of the extent of the problem and to generate a responsive student support model for honours students studying with distance education to help deal with the attrition. It is evident in the literature that open and distance form of education experience higher dropout fraction than traditional face-to-face learning institutions.
For instance, earlier studies that matched classroom-based and online education at the college level show that online learning tends to be highly characterised by a greater proportion of failure and dropout than classroom-based learning (Xu and Smith Jaggar (2011). A similar finding was reported by Pierrakeas et al (2004) who studied the dropout ratio of student furthering their education through open and distance learning institutions and of those who are enrolled in traditional higher education institutions.
Their findings unveiled that the rate at which students drop out from their studies in ODL institutions is greater than that of students enrolled in traditional higher education institutions (p. 2). Another comparable investigation that paralleled dropout incidences
between online students and those learning on campus was Patterson and McFadden’s (2009) study that found that the dropout rate of the former tends to be higher than that of the latter. Parker (2003) and Xenos (2004) who confirmed that dropout incidences of students who are enrolled in online programmes count between 25 and 40 % higher than that of face-to-face academic institutions, which ranges from 10 to 20 % also reported complementary finding.
Despite the existing plentiful studies that reported that the rate at which students drop out from e-learning education is higher compared to the dropout rate for students learning through on-campus academic institutions, there is paucity of studies devoted to determine the root-cause for such significant disparity (Levy, 2007, p. 185). Parallel perspectives are inherent in the widespread literature and advocate that there is an ample quantity of inquiries into reasons for student dropout in the broader international higher education system, yet few were focused into dropout in an online learning environment. This is evident in Willging and Johnson’s (2004) contention that regardless of a satisfactory volume of literature directed at dropout in the worldwide higher education landscape in United States, little attention has been given to dropout in the context of online distance education. A similar position, although oriented to the nature of student attrition, by (Grau-Valldosera and Minguillon, 2014, p. 291) supports the view that scholarly literature is proliferated with studies on dropout in higher education, but the nature of dropout, until recently, received little attention.
Taking a divergent position, Minnaar (2011) noted that there is a huge volume of positive postulations on student support in e-learning environments, but critically argued that it looks like they are often not accessible to students when they need them;
or if they are accessible, students do not use them, or the institution does not provide the suitable support intervention required (p. 485). This contention makes a supposition that there could be some incompatibility between what students need and types of support interventions, which higher education institutions use to meet to those needs. Should this be the case, Lee et al (2011) argue that support intervention methods that are pertinent to addressing a continuum of students’ needs and expectations as well as their pedagogical modes of studying must be used to encourage learning and to ensure students’ positive learning experiences. Supporting Minnaar’s (2012) rival inference, Tas, Selvitopu, Bora and Demirkaya (2013, p. 1563)
reported that students do not use support services available in the institution because they do not see the necessity to do that.