Abstract

Colleges and universities in every state today participate in a variety of online learning projects, as the technology allows anyone with a computer and internet connection to have access to educational resources around the world (Dutton, Dutton, & Perry, 2002). However, critics are skeptical about the use of online courses in higher education because of its high dropout rates and low graduation rates (Howell, Williams, & Lindsay, 2003). As more institutions use online courses to increase enrollments, the challenges for higher education administrators are figuring out how to keep those students enrolled and addressing who is accountable to whom and for what. The Accountability Process Model (adapted from Clark & Estes, 2002) is used as a framework to identify the goals and performance gaps of students in undergraduate online courses at the College X, to analyze the causes of the knowledge gap, motivation gap and organization gap, and finally to find potential solutions to the issue.