A recent study focused on online courses in Higher Ed (summarized in the Inside Higher Education blog) is focused on the high attrition rate in MOOCs and junior college online courses.
But some groups fared worse than others. Men showed a more negative effect from online courses than did women in terms of both course persistence and grades. Black students’ grades fell significantly more in online courses, as did those of Asian students. Students with stronger academic skills saw their course persistence and grades decline less in online courses than did students with weaker academic credentials.
The researchers concluded that “students who are already doing poorly in college do even more poorly when they take online courses”.
The study reports several interesting findings describing those students likely to struggle online.