Studying Political Science Online: The Determinants of Success in the Virtual Classroom

College students are taking online courses at an astounding rate and increasing rapidly in numbers. Here, we propose to take a first step towards understanding who the online students in Political Science are, and whether – and if so, how – they differ from traditional students. We use demographic data as well as data on academic progress and success to get a snapshot on the nature of online learners, and how well the online environment serves them to achieve academic success. We analyze data from a large metropolitan public research university that enrolls about 1300 majors in the Political Science department.