Predictors of Student Success in an Online Learning Environment in the English-Speaking Caribbean: Evidence from the University of the West Indies Open Campus

<p>This paper investigated success rates and possible predictors of success among students at The University of the West Indies Open Campus. Archival data were mined from admissions and academic records of students from the 2008 intake to explore retention and completion rates, and for student...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: S. Joel Warrican, Coreen J. Leacock, Benita P. Thompson, Melissa L. Alleyne
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) 2014-10-01
Series:Open Praxis
Subjects:
Online Access:https://openpraxis.org/articles/308
Description
Summary:<p>This paper investigated success rates and possible predictors of success among students at The University of the West Indies Open Campus. Archival data were mined from admissions and academic records of students from the 2008 intake to explore retention and completion rates, and for students enrolled in two online undergraduate courses in Semester 1 of the 2012/2013 academic year. The two courses had consistently high failure rates. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression were used to analyse the data. The results indicate that among the 2008 cohort, the retention rate was high (&gt;75%) and the completion rate compared favourably with other similar institutions. Significant predictors of programme completion included sex and location of the students as well as cumulative GPA at the end of the first year of study. Predictors of success for individual courses included the location of the students and engagement with course resources.</p>
ISSN:1369-9997
2304-070X