Reasons for student dropout in an online course in a rural K–12 setting

Abstract

Rural schools in the USA use online courses to overcome problems such as attracting and retaining teachers, geographic isolation, low student enrollment, and financial constraints. This paper reports on the reasons that 39% of rural high school students who enrolled in an online Advanced Placement course subsequently dropped the course. Students who dropped the course were asked to provide an email statement detailing their reasons for doing so. On-site facilitators—local staff members situated in the small rural schools where students were enrolled—also provided reasons whenever one of their students dropped the course. Results indicate that the reasons given by students and on-site facilitators for dropping the course often agreed, and tended to fall within the following five categories: scheduling and time constraints, academic rigor and motivation, technology problems, problems with online medium and lack of teacher immediacy, and parental influences.

Keywords:

• distance education
• dropout
• facilitators
• K–12
• rural schools

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by grant R305A04056 from the Institute of Education Sciences: United States Department of Education. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ and do not represent the granting agency.