The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between instructor interaction with students and retention in online classes in a rural community college classroom. The literature indicated that increased instructor/student interaction should lead to greater student satisfaction and retention in online instruction. The researcher operationalized interaction as announcements to the class, emails sent, amount of feedback given on assignments, and number of times the instructor logged into the course. Retention was measured by the number of students that successfully completed the class. Data were pulled from all online classes taught at Itawamba Community College during the fall 2013 semester. This data set included a total of 397 courses. Unique to this study was that all courses used standardized material that control for content delivery. This empirical study used a quantitative approach through a causal-comparative design. The statistics computed included descriptive statistics, Pearson’s product-moment correlation, and one-way ANOVA. In summary, the analysis did not support the research hypothesis in that there were no statistically significant differences in retention between the means of the instructors that met expected thresholds of the independent variables. Limitations in the current study may have influenced the outcome of the analysis and recommendations for further studies are discussed.

The retention literature concerning online education suggests a dropout crisis among most institutions offering online courses and programs. Despite the fact that online courses and programs are making it easier than ever before for students to have access to college education, students are dropping out of online classes at a much faster pace than the traditional brick and mortar or on-ground classes. It would benefit these institutions to understand why students are not finishing their courses in an effort to improve persistence and therefore retention in online education. Furthermore, to increase program retention in online education, it is important to determine what factors are related to course completion and non-completion so that at-risk students can be identified and offered support services. The characteristic of self-direction is an important concept in understanding student readiness for online education. The purpose of this study was to analyze the difference in self-direction, as measured by the Oddi Continuing Learning Inventory (OCLI), between students who persist and those who don't persist in an undergraduate online asynchronous program. The data were gathered from undergraduate students at a four-year baccalaureate degree-granting college that has both an online campus and on-ground campuses across the United States. Although self-directed learning as measured by the total score on the OCLI was not statistically significant, the foundation was laid in this study for important future research. GPA and how the student connects to the internet from home were statistically significant. Further research is needed to ascertain (1) whether self-direction is in fact related to persistence in online programs and (2) what other variables are related to student persistence. Institutions may be able to implement some mechanisms within the online course with the intention of increasing student persistence and therefore retention in asynchronous online programs. / Ph. D.