Online Teaching Modality: Student Success and Retention in Political Science Courses

The face of higher education is changing. A major trend is the fact that students are taking an increasing proportion of their courses online. That is, a growing number of students at not-for-profit private and public colleges and universities are taking some of their course work online and complete other parts in face-to-face classes. We propose to analyze how the mix of online and face-to-face course modality is reflected among political science majors at a major university and the extent to which this impact student success. Using the University of Central Florida as our case study, we examine the success of political science majors, taking into account demographics, achievement, and the mix of course modalities the student takes (n=1,173). Through descriptive statistics, regression analysis, and predicted probabilities, we analyze how course modality impacts student success and retention. Initial results indicate that the success of all students declines as they take a greater proportion of their course load online. As political science programs seek to address this trend in higher education, they need to be particularly sensitive to ways to increase the success of online learners