The Role of Student Characteristics in Predicting Retention in Online Courses

Given the continued issue of student retention for online classes, past research has suggested several “retention strategies” focused on engaging students as a way to reduce their withdrawal rate from these classes. However, a recent study testing the effects of these strategies on retention in online undergraduate business courses (Leeds et al., Int J Manage Educ 7(1/2), 2013) did not show empirical support for the effectiveness of such strategies. Taking an alternative approach that focuses on individual characteristics of students, this study takes a broader view and examines previous research literature on traditional face-to-face classes to determine how individual characteristics of students may be associated with the likelihood of withdrawal from online classes. Using a sample of undergraduate students (n = 2,314) from a large state university, results from this study identified prior performance in college classes (cumulative GPA) and class standing (senior vs. non-senior) as significant student characteristics related to student retention in online classes for all students. Other factors significantly related to retention rates for students with certain characteristics or within certain majors include previous withdrawal from online courses, gender, and receipt of academic loans.     

The Role of Classroom-Level Child Behavior Problems in Predicting Preschool Teacher Stress and Classroom Emotional Climate

Research Findings: Despite the abundance of research suggesting that preschool classroom quality influences children's social-emotional development, the equally important and related question of how characteristics of children enrolled in a classroom influence classroom quality has rarely been addressed. The current article focuses on this question while also considering teacher stress as a mediator of the relationship between child behavior problems and classroom emotional climate. Data came from 2 low-income samples. Ordinary least squares regression revealed that higher levels of child externalizing behavior problems in the fall predicted higher teacher stress in the spring. Teacher stress was nonlinearly related to classroom emotional climate in the spring: Moderate levels of teacher stress were associated with higher (i.e., more positive) classroom emotional climates, and low and high levels of teacher stress were associated with lower classroom emotional climates. Contrary to expectations, higher levels of child externalizing behavior problems were related to higher classroom emotional climates. There was no evidence that teacher stress mediated this relationship. Practice or Policy: These results are discussed in terms of strategies to reduce the disruptive influence of child behavior problems on the classroom emotional climate as well as strategies to limit high levels of preschool teacher stress.     

Adult humans’ understanding of support relations: an up-linkage replication

In an up-linkage replication, three experiments examined adult humans’ folk physics, i.e., their naturally occurring and spontaneous understanding of the physical world, using a violation of expectation (VOE) task and stimuli similar to those used to study chimpanzees’, monkeys’, and rooks’ folk physics. Unlike what has been reported with nonhuman primates, adult humans did not look longer at physically impossible than possible events, though they did rate the physically impossible events as more interesting and novel than the possible events. These results underscore that behavior during a VOE experiment has many possible causes, only one of which may be a subject’s folk physics.