Online courses have become an important part of a student's academic career. The variety and number of online course offerings grow each year. Unfortunately, there are a few drawbacks to current online courses, including differences between success rates of general education courses and their face-to-face counterparts. Current research indicates the difference in success rates can be attributed to interpersonal communication barriers, collaborative learning issues, and the lack of online support systems. With online science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses, the difference in success rates can be as high as 14%—compared to only 5% for general education courses. Multiple studies have examined why STEM courses fare so much worse than general education courses online. Research has yet to identify any student characteristic that can explain the difference. In this dissertation, I argue the primary issue relates to interpersonal communication. Interpersonal communication is vital in developing a successful online course. STEM courses introduce an interpersonal communication barrier between faculty and students because they often involve special symbols, characters, and a problem solving process that cannot easily be typed. The inability of students to handwrite a note or sketch the process used to solve a problem creates a transactional distance in communication, which can lead to delays, misunderstandings, and frustration for students and faculty within the course. In this study, I introduced the ability to handwrite directly in assessments through the addition of a sketchpad and a show-your-work box on every question in homework, quizzes, and exams. The difference between intervention and control students' exams was ≈4%. Pell Grant-eligible students performed ≈6% better on exams, improving more than the average intervention student. The largest improvement was seen among students who had no previous grade point average (GPA), meaning they were first-time college students. These students in the intervention group scored an average of 10% higher on exams when compared to similar students in control courses—the largest difference found in this study. The ≈4% difference in intervention and control groups did not vary by race, gender, or first-generational status. Students with high previous GPA's saw little to no difference in exam scores; their exam scores were above average in both intervention and control courses. There was little difference in female students in the intervention and control courses. Female students scored, on average, higher than their male counterparts in both conditions. However, male students in the intervention courses showed significantly higher scores than male students in the control courses, thus closing the gap between female and male achievement. Students who were not Pell Grant-eligible showed less than the average 4% difference between conditions. Beyond higher exam scores, students in the intervention classes had 4% lower withdrawal rates when compared with students in the control classes. Students indicated improved interpersonal communication and instructor feedback positively influenced their experience. When combined, higher exam scores and lower withdrawal rates led to a 7% improvement in overall success rates in the intervention courses. This finding, when compared with students in the control classes, translates into seven more students across three intervention classes succeeding and moving on to the next math course. Findings reinforce the importance of interpersonal communication for student success in online courses. Students with no previous GPA and Pell Grant-eligible students can benefit from targeted extra efforts in communication that help improve the probability of successful course completion.
