Outcomes

Outcomes are the result of an activity or process. The unit of analysis—either institutional, programmatic, or student—characterizes higher education outcomes. Outcomes of distributed learning are similar to higher education outcomes, differing in the mode of instructional delivery.

Academic outcomes—what students take away from the learning and teaching process—fall into two general categories. One type is student behavioral outcomes, such as “the student is employed in her field of study.” Student behavioral outcomes include traditional measures of retention and graduate rates. Distributed learning environments can result in similar behavioral outcomes, including:

• The number and percentage of students enrolled in a course that re-enroll in the next course in a sequence
• The number and percentage of students returning and enrolling in the next term of study
• The number and percentage of ...