Abstract

ALMEIDA, Onília Cristina de Souza de; ABBAD, Gardênia; MENESES, Pedro Paulo Murce  and  ZERBINI, Thaís. Dropout in distance education courses: influencing factors. Rev. bras. orientac. prof [online]. 2013, vol.14, n.1, pp.19-33. ISSN 1984-7270.

This study aimed to investigate the factors that influenced the dropout of 1113 students attending two distance courses offered by the Center for Distance Education at the University of Brasilia. However, the anwers of only 170 students who made comments at the end of the instrument through email, post and telephone were used. Subjected to content analysis, those comments were categorized into four reasons for withdrawal: situational factors, lack of academic support, problems with the technology employed in the course and lack of administrative support. These data, besides strengthening the few results in the literature on dropout in distance education, point to important aspects to be improved in such courses, in which the responsibility for the results of the teaching-learning process is transferred from the teachers and their institutions to the students.

Keywords : distance education; dropout; individual characteristics; contextual factors.

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