Returning after taking a break in online higher education: from intention to effective re-enrolment

Abstract

Dropout is a major concern in higher education, especially in distance education, which experiences higher dropout rates. Taking into account that the flexibility of online higher education allows students to opt for periods of non-enrolment (i.e. breaks), an approach is adopted at a programme level that analyses the intention to continue of those students that have not enrolled in the second semester. Thanks to this longitudinal analysis, re-enrolment intention can be compared with the effective restart of the studies in the third semester. An e-mail survey was sent to 1,216 non-active second-term students and bivariate analysis is used to explore the relation of the variables collected in the survey with the two explained variables mentioned (intention and effective re-enrolment). An analysis of the results shows that satisfaction with course-programme variables such as learning resources, the support received or the learning platform, all of which the institution can have influence over, are very closely related with re-enrolment intention. Additionally, re-enrolment intention turns out to be one of the necessary although not sole conditions for effective re-enrolment, as the latter is also related to other external variables such as the student's age or previous university experience. This knowledge makes it possible for institutions to design personalized actions to re-engage students who are taking a break, according to the observed variables.