Are Students Ready for Online Learning?

This article advances knowledge by trying to understand online courses from student behavior. This article analyzed student participation in 15 online courses during the years 2012-2015. The sample includes 106 students and their detailed log-on minutes and grades. The author applied a descriptive analysis, a one-way ANOVA, and a simple regression model. The empirical evidence suggests that student attention is substantially discounted in an online learning environment as evidenced by the much lower-than-expected log-on minutes. Students do not seem to treat online courses as equivalent to their traditional on-site counterparts. They tend to "review for assignments." It is doubtful that students would achieve the same level of learning outcomes as in a conventional face-to-face instruction. The results help to understand how college instruction can best use the Internet.