Student dropout in distance education: An application of Tinto's model

The primary purpose of this study was to validate Tinto's theoretical model of student dropout in a distance education programme enrolling adult students. The variables used in adapting the model to the distance education situation were consistent with accepted definitions of the essential elements in Tinto's model: student background characteristics, academic and social integration, goal satisfaction, institutional commitment, and the criterion, student dropout. The study surveyed 356 students enrolled in university‐level courses at The Open Learning Institute (OLI) located in Richmond, British Columbia. Discriminant and path analyses were the basic statistical procedures used to assess the predictive validity of the model and determine the pattern of association among model variables. Previous validation studies of Tinto's model suggested social integration factors would have little effect on dropout behaviour among non‐traditional student groups. However, in the present study, direct telephone contact between faculty and students significantly influenced student commitment and persistence. Overall, the Tinto model appears to be a useful framework within which to investigate the process of student attrition‐persistence in a distance education institution.     

Applying Kember's Linear‐Process Model to distance education at Charles Sturt University‐Riverina

Kember's linear‐process model of drop‐out from distance education (described in detail in Distance Education 10, 2, 196‐211) has been adapted and used as the basis for a series of interviews with students studying externally at Charles Sturt University‐Riverina. Although the sample is small, many issues are raised that arc relevant for distance educators. It is concluded Kember's model provides a useful theoretical underpinning for examining not only reasons for student withdrawal but also why they continue their studies.     

The effects of differential college environments on academic learning and student perceptions of cognitive development

It was the purpose of this study to assess the effects of differential college environments on academic learning and cognitive development by testing Pascarella's theoretical general causal model with longitudinal data from a national database on college students. Secondary analysis of longitudinal data from the 1986 Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) freshman survey and from the 1990 follow-up CIRP survey was conducted to formulate the five clusters of independent variables and two dependent variables as postulated by Pascarella. The final sample was composed of 2,165 students at four-year institutions. The data were analyzed using path analysis. Direct, indirect, and total effects of all variables are reported. Results of the path analyses partially supported Pascarella's theoretical causal model. Findings suggested that student precollege traits, the quality of student effort in academic pursuits during college, and interactions with faculty and peers are more salient influences on learning and student perceptions of cognitive development than institutional characteristics and institutional environment. Based on the findings of the present study, a refined causal model for college student academic and cognitive outcomes is proposed. Recommendations and implications for further study are given.     

The tutor/facilitator role in student retention

Open and distance learning provide particular (and sometimes overlapping) contexts for discussions of student retention. This paper argues that the environment for learning created by distance learning tutors is a key factor in student retention, whether retention is taken to refer to student completion of a single course or student persistence through a programme of study. Discussion of tutors' roles in retaining students is stimulated by the recent symposium on student retention and draws on a new analysis of three linked empirical inquiries located within the UK Open University. A fruitful integration of questionnaire surveys, project evaluation and practitioner action inquiries suggest that, where questions of retention focus on the student and their learning experience, tutors' facilitative roles are complex and valuable. Institutional policies and course design practices need to support tutors in their retention roles by using and sharing appropriate pedagogies, systems, student information and integrated professional development opportunities.     

Differences in educational outcomes of African American students from different socioeconomic backgrounds

This research tested a structural equation model of educational outcomes for three socioeconomic status (SES) groups of African American students enrolled in a community college. The structural model, which was based on a variant of Tinto's (1987) model, contained two exogenous constructs, educational intentions/commitment and external commitments, and three endogenous constructs, academic integration, social integration, and educational outcomes. The study demonstrated that higher levels of academic and social engagement had positive direct effects on educational outcomes for all students regardless of SES background. Other paths that were supported included the positive direct effects of educational intentions/commitment on academic and social integration and the negative impact of external commitments on social integration. Significant structural differences were not present in the measurement of model constructs or the process of educational outcomes among lowest, lower to middle, and middle to upper SES groups.     

Determinants of retention among Chicano college students: A structural model

This study tested a modified version of Tinto's student attrition model on a Chicano student population in two-year colleges. Structural equation modeling and LISREL VI were used to examine the parameter estimates of the structural and measurement models of the hypothesized causal model. Measures of goodness of fit were examined to provide indices for the overall fit of the causal model in the study. The measurement and structural models were found to represent a plausible causal model of student retention among Chicano students. Although the measures used in assessing the fit of the model reflected the overall strength of the hypothesized model, the present study was not entirely supportive of Tinto's model. The findings were only minimally supportive of the hypothesized relationship between measures of academic integration and retention. The results indicated that the hypothesized relationship between measures of social integration could not be substantiated. Moreover, measures of initial commitments were found to have a significantly large direct effect on the dependent variable, retention.     

Connections between learning experience,study behaviour and academic performance: a longitudinal study

Background:?Whilst past studies have established the joint influence of student learning experience and study behaviour on academic achievement, few attempts have been made to determine their causal ordering in a longitudinal framework.

Purpose:?This study explored the reciprocal relationship between learning experience and study behaviour, and examined their relative impact on university students' academic performance.

Sample:?Participants were 396 undergraduate students from a university in Hong Kong (191 men, 205 women).

Design and methods:?Students' learning experience and study behaviour were evaluated using the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) and the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI). A two-wave cross-lagged structural model was constructed to examine the reciprocal effects between learning experience and study behaviour measured over a 12-month period.

Results and conclusions:?The findings showed that after controlling for previous academic achievement, student learning experience measured at Time 1 exerted significant influence on study behaviour measured at Time 2, and study behaviour measured at Time 1 also exerted significant impact on learning experience at Time 2. Both constructs were significantly predictive of current academic performance.

Conclusions:?Results from this study outlined linkages between learning experience and study behaviour in influencing academic achievement. As the current study is based on students from a single university, further studies with different student populations are recommended. The implications of fostering motivation and enhancing university learning experience are discussed.     

Editorial

The first article in this issue raises some fascinating issues that relate to my own background in research into student learning and experience of courses in conventional higher education. Richardson, Long and Woodley have administered the Academic Engagement Form', used widely in colleges in the USA, and the 'Course Experience Questionnaire', used widely in universities in Australia, to distance learning students. John Richardson and various colleagues have previously shown that these questionnaires, separately, work as well in distance learning contexts as they do in conventional contexts: that is, they identify the same factors as components of students' experience, and the same factors relating to overall perceptions of quality of experience, as in conventional contexts. Of the many findings reported in the study reported in this issue of Open Learning, two stand out for me. First, academic engagement is shown to play a key role in students' perceptions of academic quality: engaged students perceive their course to be of higher quality. This does not tell us if students who are happy with their courses become more engaged or if those who are engaged become happier with their courses, however, merely that they are related. 'Engagement' here encompasses both social and academic engagement as defined in Tinto's model of student retention. Second, students' overall perceptions of academic quality are mediated by their perceptions of their tutors. The authors conclude: '... the attitudes and behaviours of tutors are crucial to students' perceptions of the academic quality of courses in distance education'. In conventional contexts the item on the Course Experience Questionnaire that relates most closely to student performance concerns the quality of teacher feedback, not teaching, and this is easy to understand in a distance context. The methodology of this paper (relying on factor analysis of questionnaires and multivariate analysis of the relationship between questionnaire scale scores and background variables such as age, gender, educational qualifications, workload and hearing status) may be relatively unfamiliar to readers of Open Learning. What is perhaps more familiar is that such an analysis adds to similar conclusions about the centrality of the tutorial role in ODL students' learning from very different kinds of study (such as of the relationship between tutorial attendance and student performance). There is a growing body of evidence that the same variables are involved in student perceptions of courses and of academic quality in distance learning contexts as in conventional contexts.     

Creating an information base for an individualized support system in distance education

The Open University, with over 60 000 students learning at a distance in its undergraduate profile, is the largest institution of its type in the world. With students spread throughout the United Kingdom and with such large numbers, the Open University has been critically aware of the potential depersonalization of the individual student and the possible subordination of the real needs of students to the bureaucratic requirements of the institution.

By providing each student with a tutor-counsellor who is responsible for the progress of a group of thirty to forty students from initial registration to graduation, the Open University has sought to create an intermediary support, between the distant institution and the student, who has a responsibility for the student in the institution and has a personal knowledge of the student's general progress.

However, since tutor-counsellors are part-time staff and since the University's system is large and complex, it has been necessary to support the part-time staff with up-to-date details of the information the institution holds on file concerning its students. The tutor-counsellor can thus operate in the context of his own personal ‘knowledge’ of the student and the University's institutional ‘knowledge’ of the student.

The Open University has therefore created a general data management and file processing system which allows it to assist selectively and efficiently the work of the tutor-counsellors in their support of the individual student. This is a major step in the University's objective of individualizing its support to students.     

Relationships between student cognitions and their effects on study strategies

Using Vermunt's model [Vermunt, J. D. (1998). The regulation of constructive learning processes. British Journal of Educational psychology, 68, 149–171] of self-regulated learning as a conceptual framework, this study aims to contribute to the development of finer grained models of higher education students' learning by (1) investigating causal relationships between three student cognitions which feature prominently in the research literature: self-efficacy, conceptions of learning and attributions for academic success and by (2) researching both the direct and indirect effects of these student cognitions on first year university students' study strategies. To that end a model was developed, respecified, tested, and cross validated using path analyses. Results show that within an educational context learning conceptions are fundamental student cognitions since they directly and/or indirectly influence students' self-efficacy, attributions for academic success, and study strategy.     

Heuristics for planning university study at a distance

A model was developed at Murdoch University, Western Australia, to describe distance students’ perceptions of their aims and plans for studying a course. The model follows Polya's Heuristic and Newell & Simon's General Problem Solver of students’ plans and sub‐goals for achieving those plans.

Verbal reports of four students were described using the model, and showed that students’ goals were different from those of the course academic, and that student goals influenced how they planned and organized their study. Implications for the formalization of the model for understanding student behaviour are discussed, as is educational relevance for design of external courses.     

Reciprocal effects between the academic and social integration of college students

The academic and social integration of college students has been the focus of much recent research. The Tinto model of college student withdrawal focused on the constructs as explanation for commitment to goals and persistence. Research results suggested that perhaps reciprocal relationships existed between academic and social integration. Significant influences from academic integration to social integration and vice-versa indicated differing reciprocal effects for males and females.     

Predictors of academic and social integration of college students

This study extended earlier research based on Tinto's 1975 model of student college attrition by investigating patterns of student social and academic integration across institutional types. This study found that different college types were characterized by different patterns of student participation in the social and academic life of the college. Personal characteristics and overall climate associated with each institutional type explained statistically significant but modest amounts of the variance in student participation in specific campus activities that help define campus life. Moreover, several personal characteristics were related to students' campus behavior differently across institutional types. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for student recruitment and retention.     

Determinants of predisposition to transfer among community college students: A structural model

Employing aspects of Tinto's (1975, 1987) theoretical framework, the purpose of this study was to test a model of student transfer behaviors and attitudes with a community college student population. More specifically, this study examined the structural relationships among five constructs: (1) student background factors, (2) initial commitments, (3) social integration, (4) academic integration, and (5) predisposition to transfer. Student background factors were examined to determine their direct and indirect effects on community college students' initial commitments, social integration, and academic integration on three multiple indicators of the dependent variable, predisposition to transfer: (1) number of four-year institutions students planned to apply for transfer, (2) transfer behavior, and (3) transfer perceptions. The study supported utilization of factors identified in the retention literature that are based on Tinto's model to examine transfer attitudes and behaviors among community college students. Students with high levels of social and academic integration tended to have high levels of predisposition to transfer. Ethnic background was found to have no relationship to predisposition to transfer.     

The student experience of undergraduate students: towards a conceptual framework

While the term ‘student experience’ is used widely in universities, it is remarkably under-developed as a construct in the academic literature. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a conceptual framework for the student experience of undergraduate students. The approach taken is to identify the key influences that shape the student experience from the perspective of students. It does this by addressing two questions: firstly, what are the key influences that shape the student experience? Secondly, how do these influences shape the student experience? To do this the paper draws from a wide range of studies that provide substantial theoretical and empirical evidence as to how students experience university. Drawing from Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development, it identifies seven key sets of influences or microsystems that shape the undergraduate student experience. Then the paper considers how these influences shape students’ experiences drawing from the concepts of engagement and alienation. The paper concludes by proposing a broadly defined model for the student experience where learning and development take place as a result of meaningful interactions between the student and the key microsystems. The implications of this model for universities and for further study are also discussed.     

Leadership for Organisational Learning and Improved Student Outcomes—What Do We Know?

The Leadership for Organisational Learning and Student Outcomes (LOLSO) Research Project addresses the need to extend present understandings of school reform initiatives that aim to change school practices with the intention of supporting enhanced student learning. In this article results from LOLSO's teacher surveys ('teacher voice') and student surveys ('pupil voice') are organised around six of the project's major research questions: how is the concept of organisational learning (OL) defined in Australian secondary schools (teacher voice)? What leadership practices promote OL in schools (teacher voice)? What are some outcomes of schooling other than academic achievement (pupil voice)? What are the relationships between the non-academic and academic outcomes of schooling? Do school leadership and/or organisational learning contribute to student outcomes? What other factors contribute to student outcomes? The answers to these questions lead to four clear implications relating to distributive leadership, development, context, and a broader understanding of student outcomes. The answers also raise concerns about the current emphasis on transactional leadership, that is school leadership that overemphasises the managerial or strategic.     

Identifying characteristics of successful tertiary students using path analysis

Academic achievement is the outcome of a complex system of learning and teaching relationships existing within the context of the university. A causal path model was developed and tested using a partial least squares path analysis procedure in order to examine the relationships among factors hypothesised to influence tertiary students’ academic achievement. Of the eight predictor variables included in the model (Approach to Learning motives and strategies; Learning Style; Age; Sex; Locus of Control; Metacognitive Capability; and students’ Self-Rated performance), Metacognitive Capability most clearly identifies successful students. Relationships among the other variables also provide valuable information about student learning outcomes.     

The reciprocal relationship between motivation and self-regulation: A longitudinal study on academic performance

While previous studies have examined the single directional effects of motivation constructs in influencing students' use of self-regulatory strategies, few attempts have been made to unravel their interrelationship in a unified framework. In this study we adopt the social cognitive perspective and examine the reciprocal interplay between motivation and self-regulation constructs (as measured by the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory) in influencing academic performance. Based on two waves of measurements obtained from a large sample of undergraduates from a university in Hong Kong, a cross-lagged structural equation model identified significant reciprocal effects whereby students' self-regulation predicted their subsequent motivation. After controlling for prior academic achievement, student motivation was also found to be the strongest predictor of academic performance. The findings from this study have major implications for the importance placed on motivation and self-regulation as means of facilitating academic success.