Pete Moye’
News Button

Just as California’s community colleges add more online courses to their catalog, a new report from the Community College Resource Center has found that students are more likely to fail or drop out of online classes than from traditional classes.

The report found that online course completion rates were 8 percentage points lower than those of traditional on-site classes.

“Most students don’t have the same motivation and they don’t have somebody keeping them on track like other students or the presence of the instructor,” Marilyn Brock, Executive Dean of Academic Affairs, said.

“Students sometimes look at online classes as ‘this is going to be easy.’ It’s the same amount of work and it’s the same course work. It’s just that they have to be disciplined to do it themselves. The student has to remember to go in and post to the chat room, to do the assignment, to do all the things in their own time.”

A survey on the California Watch stated that of more than 9,000 California community college students who had withdrawn from online courses indicated that the top reason for dropping out was a personal challenge related to their family, health, job, or child care.

Online courses come with support at Cerritos College. The main support system a student can find is the instructor. Although it is an online class, every online class has it’s own instructor who can be reached for any type of question or assistance.

Business management major Teresa Gonzalez said,“My experience with my previous online class was not great. I had to make myself read the textbook in order to pass the class. I did learn a lot, but I would have to prefer to be in an actual classroom hearing a lecture, to learn the subject.”

“I think the online classes work fine the way they are. They are for students who like to work at their own pace. It only gets difficult if you would rather be in the classroom following instructions.”

Help can also be found for struggling students in the student Success Center found in the library, where tutoring sessions and work shops can be found.

Students are also encouraged to enroll in hybrid classes as a “middle of the road” position on traditional and online classes. Hybrid classes take place on-site as well as online.

The report suggested that community colleges do more to improve student learning in online formats and assessment testing, used to see if online courses are a good fit for the individual student, was one of the recommendations.

Some online courses at Cerritos College actually have built in assessment that verifies if students are committed enough for the responsibility and instead suggests traditional classes if a student tests poorly.