With all this talk of blended learning and how it’s a major contributor to student satisfaction and success, I wanted to see if it had an actual impact on retention rates. My vizualisations are based on 5208 American institutions and use data from the Intergrated Postsecondary Education Data System -specifically the percentage of students that are taking on-line courses and the normal time to completion (TTC). TTC is defined as: the amount of time necessary for a student to complete all requirements for a degree or a certificate according to the institution’s catalog. This is typically 4 years (8 semesters or trimesters, or 12 quarters, excluding summer terms) for a bachelor’s degree in a standard term-based institution; 2 years (4 semesters or trimesters, or 6 quarters, excluding summer terms) for an associate’s degree in a standard term-based institution; and the various scheduled times for certificate programs. (source IPEDS) An example of this data is the percentage of students that complete a 2-year program in 2 years. Others who complete that program in 3 or 4 years would not count as completed.
The vizes are showing that attending a “brick-and-mortar” school structure in a face-to-face classroom method looks to be the best for student retention. The delivery method looks to have a high impact on the graduation rates. If you just look at the difference between students taking all their courses in a face-to-face classroom vs the students that are taking a blended learning model, it is quite revealing.