A Comparative Study Of The Accelerated 8 Week And Traditional 16 Week Online Course Formats At A North Carolina Community College

The purpose of this study was to compare student success and completion rates of the traditional 16-week online semester course length to the accelerated 8-week online semester course length at a North Carolina community college. As online programs grow and the school looks to increase course offerings, research was conducted to determine if students are as successful in the 8-week course as they are in the 16-week course. -- This research was a quantitative comparative study, which compared the results of student success and completion rates in 1 humanities course and 1 social science course from fall 2010 through spring 2011. Specifically, the results examined the role of semester length as it pertains to student performance and completion. -- Descriptive statistics show that students in the 16-week online courses have a slightly higher success rate than students in the 8-week online courses; however, students in the 8-week online courses had a higher completion rate than students in the 16-week classes. ANOVA analyses show no statistically significant difference in success and completion rate for students in the 8-week versus the 16-week online course formats.