Internet Learning Volume 6, Number 2, Fall 2017/Winter 2018 | Page 12

Better Together: How Blending Course Modalities Impacts Student Persistence
the selective 4-year institutions. The full
set of student records included in this
analysis is over 780,000 and represents
only undergraduate data.
Findings
Echoing the base conclusions in
James et al. (2016), our analysis
across historical persistence
rates by student course-taking populations
and by institution reveals that
students who blend on-ground and
online courses within terms have a
consistently higher persistence rate
than students who take all on-ground
or all online courses. The group with
the lowest historical persistence rate
are those taking all courses online.
Students taking all of their courses in
the classroom fare better than all online
students. Blending course modalities
is correlated with a higher overall
persistence rate across all institutional
types.
In the charts below, each of the
institutions indicated by Label (i.e. A,
B, C, etc.) and by institution type are
broken out by the three modalities examined:
all online, all on-ground, and
mixed or blended. The average historical
persistence rates are highest for the
4-year institutions (average of 89.3%),
followed by the proprietary institutions
(average of 83.8%) and then the 2-year,
access-oriented institutions (67.4%).
For each institution shown by type,
there are three bars, each representing
the course-taking modality. The historical
persistence rate is indicated, and
for ease of understanding, the mixed or
blended bar is colored green.
Chart 1: Persistence Rates by Institution and Modality, 4-Year
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