Official and Unofficial Withdraw: Student Perceptions and Trends for Withdrawing from a Course.

Hyllegard & Deng (2008) set out to examine the reasons why attrition rates from online courses were high at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York.  To accomplish this they collected information from the online students in the fall of 2003.  Of the original 685 students, 190 withdrew from withdrew from at least one online course.  The overall attrition rate for the online sections of these courses was 26% compared to 12% in traditional sections of the same courses. Hyllegard & Deng received survey responses from 56 of these students; 35 who had officially withdrawn and 21 who had unofficially withdrawn.  Students who unofficially withdraw did not complete the college’s process for withdrawing from a course, resulting in a failure of the course or receiving an incomplete for the course.  Both Students who officially and unofficially withdrew from courses cited lack of time or personal problems (61%), the online format of the class (30%) and technological issues (9%).  They expressed that while they had enough time each week to keep up with their courses that the classes had required more reading and writing than they had expected.

When compared to the college student body as a whole, students who officially withdrew were more likely to have registered for a heavier course load, have a higher GPA, be a full-time student, and to have completed their developmental course requirements.  They determined through examining course logs, that students who had officially withdrawn had logged on to the course 10 or more time, which indicated that they made a concerted effort to engage with the course materials before choosing to withdraw from the course.  Hyllegard & Deng conclude that students who officially withdrew were more likely to have been overextended and that demands in their personal life required them to reduce their temporarily reduce their course load in order to.

In contrast, students who unofficially withdrew were more likely than those who officially withdrew to be Hispanic, have a lower entering GPA, enroll in few credits, to have not completed their developmental coursework, and were more likely to take a higher proportion of their courses online.  These students were less engaged with the course material, and were more likely to report withdrawing due to the online format (40%).  These students also had far more dismal outcomes for the semester with an average semester GPA of only 0.6 and having on average a 0.23 ratio of completed to attempted course credits.

Interestingly, 60% of both student groups reported that they would enroll in an online course at Borough of Manhattan Community College again.  However, as the authors point out, those students who did not officially withdraw will be at a distinct disadvantage due to the impact their failing grades have on their overall academic record.  The authors conclude that those students who did not officially withdraw, in contrast with those students who officially withdrew, are more likely to be at-risk students who struggling with their course work had “hoped online education would be easier, less demanding route to academic success.”