Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 50, Issue 4, May 2008, Pages 1174-1182
Computers & Education

“Hits” (not “Discussion Posts”) predict student success in online courses: A double cross-validation study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2006.11.003Get rights and content

Abstract

The efficacy of individual components of an online course on positive course outcome was examined via stepwise multiple regression analysis. Outcome was measured as the student’s total score on all exams given during the course. The predictors were page hits, discussion posts, and discussion reads. The vast majority of the variance of outcome was accounted for by total page hits. Participation in discussion had little to no effect on performance as measured by outcome on exams. The results were double cross-validated with a sample chosen from another class. There was no shrinkage, indicating that the equations derived from the two samples were very reliable.

Section snippets

Background

The demand for online university courses continues to grow. Each year new online courses and programs become available from universities and colleges across the country. The traditional classroom instruction model continues to be challenged as the demand for innovative and technologically advanced course delivery increases. In response to the growing interest in distance education, research on distance education has emerged in several areas.

One area of study has focused on comparing student

Participants

The research participants were all students attending a small liberal arts college in Hawaii. The ethnic breakdown of the university that year was 38% Caucasian, 25% Asian, 22% Pacific Islander, 11% mixed ancestry, 1% African American, 1% Latino, and 1% American Indian. The ethnic breakdown of the students who participated in the courses under study was similar to that of the university overall. Two courses were chosen for study. The initial validation study was performed on a Community

Regression analysis of the outcomes in the community psychology course

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics for the total of the quiz scores, the number of page hits, discussion posts, and discussion reads for the 67 students who were enrolled in Community Psychology. Table 2 presents Pearson’s product–moment correlation coefficients for the same variables. As can be seen from Table 2, neither reads nor posts correlated significantly with quiz scores. However, page hits were positively correlated with quiz score.

Exploratory data analysis was conducted to check

Discussion

In the present study we explored two hypothesis: (1) Which, if any, of three predictor variables (page hits, discussion reads, or discussion posts) accounted for success in class (as measured by total quiz score)? and, (2) Does the resulting regression equation reliably predict outcome? The answer to the first question was that page hits was the only predictor of success. The answer to the second was that page hits are a very reliable means of predicting success.

Stepwise multiple regression was

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