Abstract—The Open Universities nowadays have been
growing up with the high number of students. At the same time,
they also facea high number of non re-enrolment and in turn
have affected the retention rate. This study was aimed to
explore factors contributing to student progress in the
Indonesia Open University by employing mixed methods study.
In this study, student progress refers to continuation of learning
by re-enrolling within four consecutive semesters. A mixed
methods research with the design of sequential explanatory
study was opted by obtaining the quantitative findings from
surveying 127 students and then was followed by multiple case
study from four purposefully selected respondents. In the
quantitative phase, 12 predictor variables were found to have
important contributions to the predictive model of student
progress. Meanwhile, in the qualitative phase, three major
themes emerged from the multiple case study analysis: 1)
self-motivation; 2) quality of institutional support; 3)
interaction; and 4) supporting environment. The quantitative
and qualitative findings are discussed with reference to
previous research.
Index Terms—Student progress, Open University, distance
education.
Muhammad Husni Arifin is with University of Southampton, the United
Kingdom (e-mail: mha2e11@soton.ac.uk).
Cite: Muhammad Husni Arifin, "Exploring Factors in Contributing Student Progress in the Open University," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 29-34, 2016.