Online Degree Programs' Impact on Student Motivation: Factors That Influence South Florida Online Master's Degree Students' Motivation

Student attrition is expensive for educational organizations and difficult to anticipate. Educational organizations have been unable to identify the root causes for student failure rates as online education continues to rise. Student failure has resulted in a personal loss for the individual student, an economic loss for the universities, and an economic loss for the federal government in providing financial aid with an additional intellectual loss for the economy. While extensive research efforts (Rockinson-Szapkiw, Spaulding, & Bade, 2014) have been used to develop and improve motivational models of student retention or persistence for doctoral leadership studies program nationally, a concern of many online educational institutions remains the ability to predict as early as possible the likelihood of a student dropping out of school. Following these recommendations, this study employed the analysis of secondary and program specific data to examine the predictive impact of student characteristics on motivation in an online master's degree program for students residing in South Florida. This research examined individual differences that exist in student perceptions of online master's degree programs, the variables that contribute to predicting success, and the impact on student persistence. The three variables examined in the research study were: motivation, student satisfaction, and financial strain that impact student retention.;Research studies have estimated that approximately 6.1 million college students have taken at least one online course (Wisloski, 2011). More and more higher education providers continue to place additional demands on course delivery technological systems in an attempt to impact professor-student communication and virtual methodologies. With these new demands, comes the continuous challenge of managing the level of quality programs and level of student motivation that impacts effect student outcome variables which are linked to student retention. The study used the Pearson Product Moment Correlation to measure the strength of a linear association between two variables and was denoted by r. Pearson product-moment correlation attempts to draw a line of best fit through the data of two variables. The Pearson correlation coefficient, r, indicated how far away all these data points were to the line of best fit to test the significant predictor for retention and persistence in the online master's business program, a finding that to this date did not surface in any other research pertaining to motivation, student satisfaction, or financial strain. The mean was used as the descriptive statistic of satisfaction. As such, this article focused on the impact of effective cultural background, psychological type, and Modeling the Way in particular and why it is, indeed, a significant factor in student success and retention.;Retention has hidden costs that affect not only the individual student but also the higher education institutions and society. Taking these hidden costs into consideration this research is needed as it will inform and help improve online master's students' retention. Although researchers have examined online master's education, these studies have been fraught with problems and limitations. The next sections discuss these problems, which were the main determinations for this study. The framework for this study included factors that take into account the effect of changes in the students' institutional commitment, academic motivation, and financial strains including labor market conditions relating to program completion.;The following research guided this study: 1. Is there a significant relationship between online student motivation, student satisfaction, financial strain, student retention, and gender in a master's programs at a South Florida University? Q1. What is the relationship between motivation and online student satisfaction? Q2. What is the relationship between motivation and financial strain? Q3. What is the relationship between online student satisfaction and financial strain? Q4: Is there a gender difference in motivation? Q5: Is there a gender difference in online student satisfaction? Q6: Is there a gender difference in financial strain?...