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This qualitative study compared faculty and student perceptions regarding factors that affect student retention in online courses in an attempt to more effectively address the problem of attrition. A grounded study method was used to interview students taking online courses, analyze their responses related to the critical factors that affect student retention, and compare them with those given by expert online faculty documented by Gaytan (2013). Among the various findings, two are considered critical: online students would like to receive more instruction from their professors and more comprehensive feedback that would allow them to engage in corrective behaviors to improve performance. Comparing faculty and student responses related to the factors that affect student retention could give online program administrators and faculty advisors a better understanding of these critical factors to be able to respond to the student retention challenge more effectively.The unprecedented growth in the number of online courses and programs being offered and students wishing to enroll in them has brought significant challenges to educational stakeholders. Among the major challenges is the dropout rate in online courses. For example, Patterson and McFadden (2009) found that dropout rates were six to seven times higher in online than in face-to-face programs. Boston and Ice (2011) similarly showed that student retention in online courses is much lower than in face-to-face educational settings. These facts speak to the significant challenges that institutions of higher education are confronting today (Allen and Seaman 2013). In short, "the perception of a majority of chief academic officers at all types of institutions is that lower retention rates for online courses remain a barrier to the growth of online instruction" (Allen and Seaman 2013, 6).Although many studies have looked into faculty and student perceptions of online instruction (Gaytan 2007a(Gaytan , 2007c(Gaytan , 2008a(Gaytan , 2008bGaytan and McEwen 2007), very few studies have been published regarding factors that affect student retention as perceived by online faculty and students (Boston and Ice 2011; Gaytan 2013). PURPOSE OF THE STUDYThe purpose of this qualitative study was to compare faculty and student perceptions regarding factors that affect student retention in online courses in an attempt to respond more effectively Correspondence should be sent to

The demand for writing skills is becoming increasingly prevalent within the U.S. job market. Yet, the biggest barrier to developing successful writing skills, writing apprehension, has received very little attention from scholars in the past 30 years. The present study sought to identify the influence of instructional communicative behaviors on business students’ writing apprehension. Specifically, the study tested a model in which instructors’ immediate behaviors and clarity indirectly influenced students’ writing apprehension through the mediation of perceived immediacy. The data were consistent with the hypothesized model.

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