Course Format Matters: Effects on Student Retention and Academic Performance

Retention rates at two-year colleges are consistently lower than those at four-year colleges, likely due to the higher proportion of nontraditional students who must manage academic and non-academic responsibilities. To improve student success at two-year colleges, educators have offered more flexible course formats than traditional face-to-face courses. This study compared student retention and academic performance across three course formats: 16-week face-to-face, 16-week online, and 5-week online. This study also investigated how the effects of student and course characteristics on student outcomes varied across the course formats. Multilevel modeling was used to analyze the retention rate and academic performance of 22,280 students attending seven community colleges in the Western United States. Results demonstrated that the 5-week online course format yielded the highest retention rate and academic performance. Furthermore, this course format benefited male students, part-time students, and students in non-STEM courses the most in terms of student retention and academic performance.