Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Yu, Chien

Committee Member

Adams, James H.

Committee Member

Davis, James E.

Committee Member

Olinzock, Anthony A.

Committee Member

Prince, Debra L.

Date of Degree

12-11-2015

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Instructional Systems and Workforce Development

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D)

College

College of Education

Department

Department of Instructional Systems and Workforce Development

Abstract

Online education is continually growing and becoming more widely accepted as an instructional delivery option. Student success, student retention, and course quality continue to be issues in distance education. In order to adequately address the issues of student retention, student success, and course quality, evaluation standards must exist. This study was designed to review evaluation standards for online-course quality in the community college and to explore the results of the usage of the evaluation standards as they related to student retention and success at a local community college. The purpose of this study was to (a) review evaluation standards capable of rating instructional quality of an online course, (b) validate the evaluation standards to be included in the evaluation instrument, and (c) determine if relationships exist between faculty evaluation scores and student success and retention in online courses. The evaluation instrument used in this study was a researcher-developed instrument that was validated from previous literature and a panel of experts in the field of distance learning. The instrument was used to measure the quality of the online classroom from the fall 2014 online courses at a local community college. A pilot test of 12 courses used the test–retest method to determine the reliability of the instrument. The remaining online courses were then evaluated using the Online Faculty Course Evaluation Instrument. Division Chairs and the Dean of Instruction acted as the supervisors of the faculty teaching online. There are 5 Division Chairs and 1 Dean of Instruction. These supervisors completed the evaluation instrument. Positive weak relationships were found and included: (a) correlation between course student-retention and the Assessment and Feedback Item #1, “course assessments are distributed equally and appropriately throughout the semester, (b) correlation between course student-success rates and the overall Course Information scores, (c) correlation between course student-success rates and Assessment and Feedback Items #1, “course assessments are distributed equally and appropriately throughout the semester, and (d) correlation between course student-success rates and Assessment and Feedback Items #6, “assessments align with the course objectives.”

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/18647

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