student success in online learning

Grit, the perseverance and persistence to achieve goals, and growth mindset has been shown to be a significant factor in predicting student success. They encompass such personality attributes as self-regulation, dutifulness, self-discipline, resilience, and low impulsivity. Research on grit is still in its infancy, and much remains to be discovered about how it relates to different aspects of cultural and familiar background as well as how it applies to different learning modalities. Further, as more and more universities move towards e-learning environments, and with the highly self-initiated nature of online learning, the correlation between grit and student success becomes increasingly more relevant. At this time, there is a paucity of available literature on this subject. The current study seeks to remedy this shortcoming by applying the standard 12-Question GRIT Scale with the addition of a series of validated questions that seek to measure student learning behaviors, attitude, background information, and perceived self-learning efficacy into a single instrument. The study which began in the Fall of 2015 is being run in two parts. During the first phase, a survey of assessment students enrolled in fully online undergraduate business courses has been distributed and analyzed. In the second phase, the relationship between grit and student persistence and success in online learning environments is being explored. This presentation will focus on the results of the first phase, the hypotheses and possibilities being explored in the second phase, and the implications of grit on student success in online learning.