High Dropout Rate in Distance Education: Why?

May 24, 2011 ZHANG Yang（Allen） 4421293

Last week, when I chatted with my brother, he told me he gave up his online course, which surprised me most. I knew in order to get a good grade in Graduate Entrance Examination, he enrolled in Koolearn operated by New Oriental School which provides all kinds of English online classes three months ago. The main way to learn the courses is to watch online courseware, most of which are videos that a teacher presents alone. I even remembered his excited tone when he told me he registered distance course that day. Why he quit from this course only after one month? I am really curious. When I asked him the reason, he said it was the bad feelings caused by lake of communication and prompt response or feedback from teachers that made him drop out. He also mentioned that his friend who had another distance course also dropped out.

When I googled “Distance Education”, I found the dropout rate in Distance Education is really high. Generally speaking, the dropout rate is often two times higher in distance offerings than in their face-to-face counterparts (Moore & Kearsley, 1996). In Europe, the dropout rate is usually ranging from 20 to 30 percentages (Pierrakeas, 2004). In USA, according to a report in the Chronicle for Higher Education found that institutions report dropout rates ranging from 20 to 50 percent for distance learners (Frankola, 2001). According to Cao (2005), the dropout rate is around 30% in some colleges of China. From this data, we can see that high dropout rates are indeed an embarrassing problem.

However, why? Why the dropout rate in distance education is so high? What is the main factor leading to this fact? After reading some articles and references, I found different researchers have different opinions or ideas about the real reasons. Some researchers believe the individual factors are the main cause; some researchers think poorly designed courses should be responsible; some researchers point out that lack of communication or interaction between students and instructors and among students is the main reason. As far as I am concerned, lack of communication and interaction directly lead to the high dropout rate in distance education.

The communication and interaction between learners and teachers or among learners can help them confirm and sustain their study motivation, which has a powerful affect on completion rates, regardless of institutional setting. Interaction is a good motivator to stimulate students’ potential. Prior research has indicated that lack of motivation is an important cause of dropouts when students choose to study at a distance (Visser, et al, 2001). If students lose the motivation that why to study or study for what, they will lose the confident to finish their courses.

Without doubt, if students in conventional teaching and learning settings have motivational problems, teachers or instructors can easily detect and correct them, because instructors have more frequent contact with learners. In addition, through participation in face-to-face group work as well as other cooperative activities, traditional learners have more chances to contact or communicate with peers, which can also directly enhance motivational levels in students. Because of less communication and interaction, however, distance learners’ motivational problems can go unnoticed and undetected for extended periods. Therefore, they will not benefit from the personal contact experiences. As a result, distance learners may not receive the timely help that would bring about higher levels of motivation when it is truly needed most by these students. It is abundantly clear that the communication or interaction can have a direct and strong impact on learners’ motivation and dropout rate in education.

I think, the best way to enhance the communication or interaction is through the good use of technology such as e-mail, chatting software ect, for interaction can occur synchronously, which may be helpful to alleviate the problem that students have fewer opportunities to communicate with instructors directly and timely.

References

Cao, W. & Guan, Z. Y. (2005). The inspiration of the regularity of student dropout rate web-based education (in Chinese). Distance Education in China, 11(1). P. 36-44

Frankola, K. (2001). Why online learners drop out. Workforce; Costa Mesa, 80 (10).

Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (1996). Distance education: A systems view. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Pierrakeas, C. (2004). Comparative Study of Dropout rates and Causes for Two Different Distance Courses. Retrieved on December 21, 2005 at

http://www.irrodl.org/content/v5.2/pierrakeas-research.html

Visser, L., Plomp, T., Amirault, R. J. & Wilmad, K. (2001), Motivating students at a distance: The case of an international audience. Educational Technology Research & Development, 50(1), p.94-110. http://purl.org/utwente/58759