Enrollment in K-12 online courses continues to rise substantially each year (Evergreen Education Group, 2015). As the number of students taking courses online increases, the number of parents parenting in online courses also increases. This qualitative exploratory case study, bounded by the online program that was studied, was performed to better understand parents’ perceptions of their roles in online high school mathematics courses. Eighty-seven parents participated in an online questionnaire which elicited both quantitative and qualitative responses. Guided by the major tenets of symbolic interactionism theoretical framework, these responses were combined with data from six interviews to investigate why parents chose to enroll their children in online mathematics courses, their expectations pertaining to the online mathematics course, and their perceived roles and responsibilities in the online mathematics course. Through a detailed process of analyzing the questionnaire and interview data, nine themes emerged: (a) participant parents enrolled their children in online mathematics courses to remove their child from a negative social environment and to avoid distractions in the traditional setting; (b) participant parents want their children to have the flexibility to work ahead of their peers; (c) the school should provide quality curriculum and resources for teachers, students, and parents; (d) teachers should identify and address when students need help; (e) teachers should be available and approachable; (f) students should put forth their best effort; (g) students should ask for help when they experience difficulty understanding a new concept; (h) participant parents monitor to make sure their children are completing assignments and asking for help; and (i) participant parents help their children by re-teaching mathematics concepts or encouraging the child to seek help from others. This study has theoretical and practical significance by adding to literature investigating parental roles in mathematics education and providing insight on the nature of parental involvement in an online high school mathematics program. Consistent with relevant literature (Currie-Rubin & Smith, 2014; Curtis, 2013; Thurber, 2013), results of this study call upon educators to invest in efforts that enhance understanding of parents’ perspectives in an effort to strengthen parental involvement in online mathematics courses. INDEX WORDS: Mathematics, Online learning, Online mathematics, K-12 online learning, Virtual learning, Parental involvement, Parental engagement, Parental roles, Interactions, Teacher responsibilities, Student responsibilities, Success, Perceptions of success, Flexibility

Online mathematics courses at Somerset Community College (SCC) have traditionally had a lower retention rate than their in-person counterparts. This study looked at online and in-person students at SCC in the courses Intermediate Algebra and College Algebra. Beginning of semester student demographics were considered to determine whether or not the online and in-person student populations were comparable. End of semester student demographics, retention rates, and grades on the final exams were examined to determine whether or not there were patterns among completer students. Finally, a survey was administered to students and instructors to determine their perceptions of several factors thought to influence student success and to determine areas of agreement and disagreement among these factors. Follow-up telephone interviews were given to instructors and students in order to identify areas that were not covered in the survey. The results indicated that although online courses tended to attract older students, the online and in-person student groups were similar in terms of make-up. This was true both at the beginning and at the end of the semester. The in-person sections showed better results, both in terms of retention and grades on the final exams. The survey results were analyzed using Rasch analysis. This showed differences between students and instructors, most importantly in the areas of student self-efficacy behaviors and communication between instructor and student. These differences between students and instructors were generally exacerbated in the online sections indicating that these areas might have had an impact on the lower retention and grades of the online sections.

This dissertation study explored: 1) instructors’ use of discussion strategies that enhance meaningful learner interactions in online discussions and student performance, and 2) learners’ interaction patterns in online discussions that lead to better student performance in online introductory mathematics courses. In particular, the study applied a set of data mining techniques to a large-scale dataset automatically collected by the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) for five consecutive years at a public university in the U.S., which included 2,869 students enrolled in 72 courses. First, the study found that the courses that posted more open-ended prompts, evaluated students’ discussion messages posted by students, used focused discussion settings (i.e., allowing a single response and replies to that response), and provided more elaborated feedback had higher students final grades than those which did not. Second, the results showed the instructors’ use of discussion strategies (discussion structures) influenced the quantity (volume of discussion), the breadth (distribution of participation throughout the discussion), and the quality of learner interactions (levels of knowledge construction) in online discussions. Lastly, the results also revealed that the students’ messages related to allocentric elaboration (i.e., taking other peers’ contributions in argumentive or evaluative ways) and application (i.e., application of new knowledge) showed the highest predictive value for their course performance. The findings from this study suggest that it is important to provide opportunities for learners to freely discuss course content, rather than creating a discussion task related to producing a correct answer, in introductory mathematics courses. Other findings reported in the study can also serve as guidance for instructors or instructional designers on how to design better online mathematics courses.