The effect of tutor-specific and other motivational factors on student retention on Icelandic Online

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of tracking and survey data collected over eight years on 400 users of one of seven Icelandic Online (IOL) courses: IOL 2; an open online program in Icelandic as a second language. The course is offered in three delivery modes; blended, distance, and open self-directed mode. This article introduces the second phase of a three-tiered mixed-method study and follows up previous findings on IOL that drew on tracking data from 43,000 learners, which revealed overall low completion rates and that the blended mode is more effective in retaining learners than other modes (Friðriksdóttir, 2018). The main goal of the current study is to identify factors which may affect student retention on IOL, and which may explain why the blended mode is more effective. This study attempts to assess whether (a) the initial goal to complete a course and (b) certain tutor-specific factors influence retention, and also to investigate (c) self-reported motives that drive learners towards completing. The findings reveal that the intent to complete is a significant predictor of course completion and that the majority of blended learners had the initial goal of completing. Furthermore, the study illuminates that most of the learners in the tutorial modes report that tutor-specific factors were important in motivating them. Finally, course completers report diverse reasons for completion; the majority of the blended learners are driven in their goal to complete by the credits offered.

Keywords:

• Retention
• initial goal
• tutor-specific factors
• reason for course completion
• Icelandic Online

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful attention to her manuscript and their insightful comments and suggestions. She also wishes to express her appreciation to the students on IOL 2 who participated in the study. Finally, she would like to thank her advisor, Birna Arnbjörnsdóttir, for her guidance and feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See findings in Friðriksdóttir (2018); Figure 1(B), which lay a foundation for the parameters to measure retention in the current study: a) Learners who covered content pages #511–534 (now referred to as #51–63; completed 81%–100% of the content), are now considered ‘course completers’; b) Learners who covered pages #132–434 (or pages #10–50; completed 15.9%–79.4%) are considered ‘non-completers’; c) Learners who left the course before they reached page #132 (or covered pages #1–9; completed less than 15.9%) are excluded from this study.

2 Twelve participants who marked ‘I don’t know’/‘choose not to answer’ were considered as those who had no clear goal and in Table 1 as those who had no goal to complete.

3 As suggested by one reviewer this may be linked with the fact that this is a lower-intermediate course.

4 Even though the sample size was limited in the blended mode, part of this data was run through an analysis of statistical significance, observing no significant differences between those who considered the factor ‘tutor support overall’ important for their motivation and those who did not (p = 0.05801), or between those who considered the factor ‘detailed introduction of the program’ important and those who did not (p = 0.1127).

5 Note that not only the most engaged and successful students completed the questionnaire (44% of the respondents completed IOL 2, 56% did not) and proportionately more of the respondents took IOL 2 recently (2016–2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kolbrún Friðriksdóttir

Kolbrún Friðriksdóttir is an Adjunct Professor of Icelandic as a Second Language at the University of Iceland and a Ph.D. student at the University of Iceland. Her advisor is Birna Arnbjörnsdóttir. Kolbrún is a project manager and tutor on Icelandic Online (IOL) (https://icelandiconline.com), web-based open and free courses in Icelandic as a second language which have been offered by the University of Iceland since 2004. Approximately 200.000 users have visited the website. This article presents data that is part of her doctoral research.