2017 Volume 47 Pages 63-72
This practical report discusses whether sending weekly reminder emails facilitates independent learning for a Web-Based Training (WBT) course and decreases dropout rates. Students received reminder emails for 17 weeks detailing how much they were expected to study online per week. The results show that the overall number of students who passed the course was not increased significantly by the reminder emails. However, the receivers of reminder emails continued to study online and took the final exams significantly more than the non-receivers of reminder emails. Analyzing students’ access log to online materials also indicates that students receiving reminders accessed online materials early in the semester and continued studying until the final exam, while students not receiving the reminders started just before the final exam.
