| Attrition of distance learning (DL) students has been found to greatly affect courses offered to the military, particularly the Navy College Program for Afloat College Education (NCPACE). During fiscal year 2010, the NCPACE DL program had a reported attrition rate of 46.51% for the junior enlisted ranks of E-1 through E-3, the highest student attrition rates of all Navy educational programs. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore major contributing factors to the high attrition rates of sailors taking NCPACE DL courses, from the participants' perspectives. To explore this issue, the researcher conducted an exploratory multiple case study, utilizing semistructured interviews with open-ended questions. The sample for this multiple case study was comprised of 15 sailors across five major Navy bases, all of whom had not successfully completed one or more NPACE DL courses, as opportunities for replication. Each case was analyzed separately and commonalities and differences were compared across all 15 cases. Faculty interaction and sound advising were constructs identified as primary factors affecting noncompletion. Precollege characteristics were not contributing factors. Course instructional design and course materials were new variables that emerged from the study. Courses examined in this study lacked meaningful instructional design, serving as repositories of notes and quizzes. Results were replicated across all cases. Course instructional design quality should be enhanced, to compensate for the lack of faculty interaction, instruction, and feedback. Supporting materials should be made compatible with different operating systems aside from WindowsRTM-based computers, as several sailors were unable to access the materials from their MacsRTM. A new model of individual distance learning course attrition is proposed, aimed at individual courses, not the program as a whole, depicting the variables that proved to be major contributing factors to students' decisions not to complete courses. This model can help faculty and college staff prevent course dropout. A comparison between successful and unsuccessful NCPACE DL courses is recommended as a future study, to decipher whether faculty interaction, in addition to course design and materials, are the main contributing factors in student attrition program-wide, as seen in the individual courses in this research study. |
