Leveraging Online Learning Student Success with Soft and Hard Deadlines
Abstract: Since the earliest days of E-Learning, freedom has been the lure used to sell programs to online students. Images of pajama-clad students sitting on their couch with a nearby laptop or carefree students on laptops using coffee shop Wi-Fi promoted a new sort of classroom in the early 00s—one not bound by defined meeting times and contained in brick and mortar, but one available anytime and anywhere opportune to the student. Flexibility and convenience became the hallmark of online learning as it matured in the early 00s. Yet in a world of next-generation classrooms marked by images of freedom and liberation, many students still find themselves contained by traditional concrete, unyielding deadlines and instructors who wield them. The illusion of freedom is shattered as online students must manage the life factors that led them to choose online learning as well as firm dates and times to meet deadlines. After seeing students routinely struggle with this traditional deadline-driven system in an online introductory computer skills class, I implemented a new system of flexible, student-friendly deadlines that increased retention, student performance, and student satisfaction. This presentation will offer action research findings on this system, including retention data as well as student comments gathered via end-of-course surveys.