Research Design This study will use a qualitive research design to identify the best institutional practices to improve student retention in online programs of study offered in the Alabama Community College (ACC) System. The qualitative research design for this study will involve the collection of expert consensus concerning the subject of online student retention. This proposed study will survey a panel of administrators and educators who are familiar with online education practices to identify their perceptions of the best practices and methods to improve student in online education in the ACC system. A qualitative research design for this proposed study is appropriate, because there’s much uncertainty about the full range of variables that …show more content…
The questions for each round will developed based on responses from the previous round. After development of a new set of question, panelists will be given a subsequent survey. In all, panelists will respond to three sets of survey questions. Open-ended question responses from each panelist will be entered into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet by question and respondent ID number. Data will be coded and categorized using NVivo 09 software as well as manually, to identify themes and potentially useful information that would help provide recommendations and potential institutional changes to improve student persistence and retention in online programs of study at community colleges in the ACC system. Similar themes will be group together from the retrieved responses to ascertain consensus. The population for this study will consist of administrators and educators with expertise in undergraduate higher education online programs in the ACC system. The selected panelists will be those individuals responsible for online student retention in undergraduate, fully online program in an ACC. The panel of experts for this proposed study will include: campus president, chancellor, deans, faculty manager, chief technology officer, faculty director of online education, associate faculty, distance learning coordinators, and online instructional support …show more content…
● This study will specifically focus on institutional practices involving community colleges in the ACC system, which will limit the ability to generalize findings to community colleges in other states. This is because there’s high variability in institutional polices/practices with regards to distance education in state community college systems across the United States. ● There are numerous identified factors that impact student attrition and persistence in online courses which will complicate the comparison of ACC institutions and their policies/practices concerning their online programs of study. ● This study will employ a qualitative research design. Qualitative surveys are less structured as the researcher(s) attempt to gain a deeper understanding people’s attitudes, opinions, and thoughts on a specific research topic. While qualitative research brings depth of understanding to the research questions, it makes data collection and analysis more difficult. Also, open-ended questions allow respondents to freely express their thoughts on the research topic. However, the open-ended