MOTHERHOOD AND THE PURSUIT OF HIGHER EDUCATION:

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF COLLEGE STUDENT

MOTHERS COMPLETING ONLINE BACHELOR’S
DEGREE PROGRAMS

A dissertation submitted by

Tanya M. Spilovoy
to
Benedictine University

in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Education
in
Higher Education and Organizational Change

Lisle, Illinois

August 2013
Copyright by Tanya Marie Spilovoy, 2014

All rights reserved

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires

to make it happen.” I believe that to be true. There were a billion tiny moments that

brought me to the completion of this dissertation—the influences of the people who love

me, decisions I’ve made, and the singular path presented by the universe: you will

succeed.

My mother, Gail Spilovoy, was the inspiration for the topic of my dissertation.

She enrolled in college as a married and working mother when I was six and my sister,

Jessica, was four. Her mother (my grandma) was unsupportive and thought that women

should stay home, but her father (my grandpa) bought my mom new glasses, paid for her

books and supplies, and paid her tuition. She was the first woman in her family to go to

college.

When Gail started college, she was not able to write a complete sentence, but she

was determined not to fail. She cleaned office buildings at night and went to class and

studied in the day. She earned straight A’s in her courses because she worked so hard. As

a child, I knew that if I wanted to spend time with my mom, I could help her study for her

tests. I can still remember sitting on her bed, reading her handwritten notes out loud so

she could memorize. This is how I learned to read cursive. And years later during my first

few years of college, I often knew the course material in my classes because I had already

studied it as a child. I still remember the red dress she wore on her graduation day. I was

so proud of her, and I felt like I was graduating too.

Dakota and Ruby, my babies, were 3 years old and 2 months old when I began my

doctorate. They do not remember a time when their mother wasn’t in college. Just as I
iii
watched my mother struggle and succeed, I saw my own journey mirrored in my

children’s eyes. Their belief in me, along with the support of my husband Scott, my

father Dan, my sister Jessica, and other friends and family, made it impossible to quit.

There does not exist enough money or gratitude to repay Dr. Nancy Bentley, my

dissertation committee director, for the time and energy she invested in me. I thank her

for being there for me from the first faint line to the finishing defense. I didn’t want an

easy win, and she did not disappoint; with grace and firm resolve, Nancy expected me to

shatter all limitations and grow beyond impossible barriers. As Paulo Coelho wrote,

“People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.” I am

grateful for my dissertation chair, Dr. Antonina Lukenchuk, for her unwavering

commitment to my qualitative research, and to Dr. John Woods, my dissertation reader,

for sharing his vision with me. I also want to thank Dr. Chand, director of the Ed. D.

Higher Education and Organizational Change program, for encouraging me to be true to

myself as I develop my leadership style, and also Lane Huber for mentoring my doctoral

internship in distance education. All of these people believed in me during the times I

struggled to believe in myself. Each one contributed their strengths to further my

personal, professional, and academic success.

Finally, I have to thank the amazing and inspiring women who participated in this

study. Their willingness to share their experiences as mothers in online degree programs

has helped create an important contribution to the scholarly literature. It is my hope that

their stories will influence the success of many other women in the future.

iv
 DEDICATIONS

To my mother and first teacher, Gail Irene Bechtold Spilovoy,

and to my children Dakota Sky Skaro and Ruby Song Cherie Skaro.

May all of your wildest dreams come true.

v
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... viii

ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... ix

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................. 1

Statement of the Problem............................................................................................. 2

Research Purpose and Questions ................................................................................. 3

Significance of the Study ............................................................................................. 3

CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ...................................................... 8

Broadband and Access to Online Education ............................................................... 8

Continuous Growth of Online Learning .................................................................... 10

Disruptive Innovations................................................................................... 12

Online Learning: Response to Economic Crisis and Legislative Activity ................ 16

Adult and Non-Traditional Students .......................................................................... 20

Women in Higher Education ..................................................................................... 23

Female Identity Theories ........................................................................................... 23

Josselson’s Theory ......................................................................................... 25

Sidel’s Theory................................................................................................ 27

Motherhood and Educational Attainment .................................................................. 29

Women as Online Learners ....................................................................................... 32

Student Success and Retention in Distance Education .............................................. 35

The Importance of Family and Parental Involvement ........................................ 36

Student Involvement Theories ............................................................................ 37

Student Involvement Online ................................................................... 38

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 Motivational Course Design ................................................................... 39

Institutional Factors Affecting Online Student Success and Retention .. 40

Mattering Theory ........................................................................ 44

Validation Theory ....................................................................... 45

Personal Factors Affecting Student Success and Retention ................... 46

Online Learning and Theories of Self-Direction and Motivation ............................. 48

Self-Efficacy Theory .......................................................................................... 49

Self-Regulated Learning Theory ........................................................................ 51

Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions ............................................. 53

The Relationship between Emotions and Persistence in Online Courses.................. 54

Summary .................................................................................................................... 57

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY ......................................................................... 59

Positioning the Study within the Qualitative Research Paradigm ............................. 59

Research Design: Phenomenological Tradition......................................................... 61

Phenomenology: Research Practice and Bracketing ................................................. 63

Data Collection Procedures ....................................................................................... 65

Selection of Participants ..................................................................................... 65

Data Sources ....................................................................................................... 67

Demographic Survey .......................................................................................... 67

Interviews ........................................................................................................... 67

Documents and Artifacts .................................................................................... 68

Field Notes.......................................................................................................... 69

Data Analysis ................................................................................................. 69

vii
 Criteria for Evaluation ........................................................................................ 70

Ethical Considerations and Researcher’s Self .................................................... 71

Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 74

CHAPTER FOUR: LIFE JOURNEYS OF ONLINE STUDENT MOTHERS ............... 75

A Life in Transition ................................................................................................... 75

Angela ........................................................................................................................ 78

Beth ............................................................................................................................ 81

Cammie ...................................................................................................................... 85

Dawn .......................................................................................................................... 89

Ellen ........................................................................................................................... 94

Jenna ........................................................................................................................ 100

Leah ......................................................................................................................... 103

Mary......................................................................................................................... 108

Nina.......................................................................................................................... 111

Sara .......................................................................................................................... 114

Sherrie ...................................................................................................................... 119

Summer .................................................................................................................... 121

Reflections on the Participants’ Life Journeys ........................................................ 127

CHAPTER FIVE: WOMEN AS MOTHERS AND STUDENTS: SHARED LIVED

EXPERIENCE ................................................................................................................ 128

Essential Experiences of the Participants as Mothers.............................................. 129

Ways of Mothering ........................................................................................... 129

Mother Only Approach..................................................................................... 131

viii
 Life Balance Approach ..................................................................................... 132

Reluctant Approach .......................................................................................... 134

Beyond Motherhood Approach ........................................................................ 135

Motherhood is Challenging Regardless of Children’s Ages ............................ 138

Understand, our Kids Are # 1 ........................................................................... 142

Essential Experiences of the Participants as Online Students ................................. 144

We Are Exhausted ............................................................................................ 144

Online Education Fits Educational Goals and Personal Life ........................... 146

Flexibility for Busy Lives ..................................................................... 147

Time with Children............................................................................... 148

We Aren’t 18 Anymore ........................................................................ 149

Geographical Location and Academic Program .................................. 152

Learning Styles: Online vs. Classroom ................................................ 153

Motivations: Money and Job Opportunities ......................................... 155

We Found Ways to Overcome the Challenges, Self-Doubt, and Fears 158

Small Successes Led to Bigger Successes and Self-Confidence

.................................................................................................. 160

Positive Self-Talk and Self-Motivation .................................... 162

Setting Rewards for Achievement ............................................ 163

No Such Thing as Doing it All: We Prioritized ....................... 164

We Advocated for Ourselves.................................................... 166

We Were Resourceful and Found Our Own Support Networks

.................................................................................................. 167
ix
 We Had to Succeed Because Our Children Were Watching .... 171

Reflections ............................................................................................................... 173

CHAPTER SIX: MOTHERS IN ONLINE BACHELORS DEGREE PROGRAMS:

DISCUSSION, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND REFLECTIONS ................................ 174

What is it Like to Be a College Student Mother Pursuing an Online Degree Program?

................................................................................................................................. 175

What Factors are Essential to the Success, Retention, and Degree Completion of

Student Mothers? ..................................................................................................... 177

A Desire for Understanding ......................................................................... 178

Recommendations ................................................................................................... 180

Recommendations for Policy Makers .......................................................... 180

Recommendations for Enrollment Services ................................................ 181

Recommendations for Academic Advisors ................................................. 183

Recommendations for Faculty ..................................................................... 184

Recommendations for Online Education Leaders and Developers ............. 184

Recommendations for Further Research ..................................................... 186

Final Reflections on the Study................................................................................. 188

A Pioneer Mother Memorial ........................................................................ 189

x
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 189

APPENDIX A: DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEY ................................................................ 215

APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW GUIDE ........................................................................... 217

APPENDIX C: INFORMED CONSENT FORM .......................................................... 220

APPENDIX D: MOTHERING WHILE COMPLETING AN ONLINE DOCTORAL

PROGRAM: REFLECTION .......................................................................................... 224

APPENDIX E: MOTHERING WHILE COMPLETING AN ONLINE DEGREE

PROGRAM: DRAWING BY DAKOTA SKY SKARO ............................................... 228

APPENDIX F: PRAIRIE POET AND COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES ......................... 230

Alice Sinclair Page .............................................................................................. 231

Tracy Price .......................................................................................................... 231

Tom Porter .......................................................................................................... 232

David Bouchard .................................................................................................. 233

APPENDIX G: PLAINS PROSE ................................................................................... 234

APPENDIX H: NORTH DAKOTA PRAIRIES ............................................................ 236

VITA ............................................................................................................................... 239

xi
 LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Participant Demographic Information ..................................................................... 77

2. Reasons for Choosing Online Education ............................................................... 148

xii
 ABSTRACT

This study examines ways in which college student mothers experience the

pursuit of online higher education while mothering. The twelve participants—mothers

who were enrolled in and completed online bachelor’s degree programs at various

institution types on the great plains—testified to a myriad of experiences in higher

education online learning environments. In-depth qualitative interviews with the

participants provided major data for analysis in this phenomenological study. The

participants’ responses addressed their individual paths to higher education and the

successes and challenges that they faced on the way to completing their online bachelor’s

degrees. The results of this study are intended for higher education faculty and

administrators who are involved in designing online programs to better meet the needs of

non-traditional students such as student mothers so these women can persist and graduate

from online bachelor’s degree programs. Seven major themes and sixteen subthemes

emerged on topics of motherhood, reasons for returning to college, reasons for choosing

online programs, persistence, retention, and participant recommendations for college

personnel.

xiii
 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Online students who are also mothers often struggle with finding proper balance

between family responsibilities and academic and career aspirations. Success in one area

of life sometimes means that another area suffers. “Adult women, who typically have

more family/work responsibilities and time demands than most men, are still targeted as

one of the prime constituencies of an increasing online student pool” (Kramarae, 2001, p.

6). However, accomplishing the goal of earning a degree while parenting is neither

glamorous nor easy. As an online doctoral student and the mother of two small children,

I experienced challenges in trying to balance my studies, work, and parenting demands.

As a college instructor and dean, I often encountered student mothers in online programs

who struggled with balancing all of their many responsibilities. I did my best to support

them academically and emotionally. Some were successful and graduated; others

dropped out or failed. An extensive search of the literature on this subject resulted in

discovering few relevant academic sources; this dearth of research cemented my intention

to pursue this study. I wanted to know more about this group of under-researched college

students. My wish was to give them a voice, to better understand their unique place in

higher education, and to create a dialogue that could facilitate new pathways for their

success.

1
 Statement of the Problem

According to the American Association of University Women (1999), women

return to college for a variety of reasons, including career advancement, higher wages,

and personal fulfillment. However, many women face significant barriers that make

attaining a degree in a traditional college setting challenging or impossible. Balancing a

job, a family, a career, and college responsibilities is difficult for women who are

enrolled in online classes (Furst-Bowe & Dittmann, 2001; Kramarae, 2001; Muller,

2008). While online courses offer flexibility, women students often struggle to “squeeze

distance learning into their already packed work and family lives” (Kramarae, 2001, p.

3). This study sought to address the challenges and dilemmas that individual student

mothers experience in completing a bachelor’s degree online as well as to uncover the

stories of success of those mothers who persisted toward their degree completion.

Typical 18-year-old college freshmen living in dorms and taking on-campus

classes are not the college student norm anymore. At one time, student mothers may

have been considered “non-traditional” students. However, females now make up the

majority of college students. Factors such as job loss, a depressed economy, or major life

changes such as divorce or widowhood motivate women to begin or complete degree

coursework. According to Allen and Seaman (2010a), three-quarters of the institutions

surveyed reported that the economic downturn in the U.S. has increased demand for

online courses and programs.

Colleges and universities have become more flexible in their approach, offering

day, evening, online, accelerated, and mixed-modality courses and programs to

accommodate an older population of adults who have responsibilities such as families

2
and mortgages. Student mothers are a unique student population because they face many

obstacles to educational success in part due to family, child, work, financial, and home

responsibilities.

Research Purpose and Questions

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to examine ways in which

individual women experience online bachelor’s degree programs while also raising their

children. Central focuses of this inquiry are the lived experiences of 12 student mothers

who had graduated from online bachelor’s degree programs, their motivation to pursue

higher education, their strategies of persistence, their perceptions of motherhood, and the

challenges and obstacles they faced along the path toward their degree completion.

The following are the research questions that guided this study:

1. What is it like to be a college student mother pursuing an online degree

program?

2. What factors are essential to the success, retention, and degree completion of

student mothers?

Significance of the Study

From a broad perspective, this dissertation study sought to address a large societal

need. The United States is in dire need of an educated workforce. The U.S. Department

of Labor (2012) predicted:

Occupations that typically need some type of postsecondary education for entry
are projected to grow the fastest during the 2010–20 decade. Occupations
classified as needing a master’s degree are projected to grow by 21.7 percent,
followed by doctoral or professional degree occupations at 19.9 percent, and
associate’s degree occupations at 18.0 percent. (para. 17)

3
 According to the National Governors Association (2008), the United States was

tied for first place in college and university graduation rates in 1995 but, by 2006, the

U.S. dropped to fourteenth place in the world. In 1970, the United States boasted 30% of

the world’s college graduates but, in 2008, produced less than 15% (p. 11). According to

a report by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS)

(2009), in order to remain competitive in the world market, the U.S. needs to increase its

number of bachelor’s degrees by 55% by 2025 in order to rival the world’s best-

performing countries. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings

showed the United States trailing other Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD) countries in mathematics scores, reading scores, secondary

graduation rates, and postsecondary graduation rates (McKinsey & Co., 2009). Overall

improvements in educational attainment are needed if the United States is to remain

competitive in the 21st century.

In response to this need, the 2010 budget message of President Obama focused on

rebuilding the U.S. economy, helping Americans find jobs, and becoming competitive in

the world market. Obama (2010) called for higher education to meet the goal of leading

the world in new college graduates by 2020. More than ever before, institutions of higher

education have had to find new ways to stay viable. Zusman (2005) noted that

governmental pressures and marketplace demands have effected “institutional decisions

in program choices, tuition charges, and research conducted on the outcomes of higher

education for society at large” (p. 115).

According to a 2011 Sloan Consortium Survey of Online Learning, nearly one-

third of all college students nationwide are taking at least one online course in the U.S.,
4
more than six million people total (Allen & Seaman, 2011). Allen and Seaman (2011)

reported that, since the first survey in 2002, the number of students choosing to take

online courses continued to grow at a rate that was higher than that of higher education

overall.

The growth from 1.6 million students taking at least one online course in fall 2002
to the 6.1 million for fall 2010 translates into a compound annual growth rate of
18.3 percent for this time period. For comparison, the overall higher education
student body has grown at an annual rate of just over two percent during this same
period—from 16.6 million in fall 2002 to 19.6 million for fall 2010. (p. 11)

Higher education has responded to marketplace needs by adding more online

programs and courses (Bradley, 2011). However, online programs typically have lower

retention and persistence rates than on-site programs (DiRamio & Wolverton, 2006;

Fisher, 2010; Heyman, 2010; Hoyer, 2006; Liu, Gomez, Khan, & Yen, 2007; Scalese,

2001; Stanford-Bowers, 2008). Research addressing the unique challenges and

educational needs of student mothers in online programs could contribute to policy,

programming, and instructional design, which in turn might increase the number of

college graduates.

Retention of college students is an important topic in higher education. Leading

retention research, such as Tinto’s (1975) student integration model and Bean and

Eaton’s (2000) model of student departure, offers models for addressing issues of

attrition, retention, and persistence in higher education (Herbert, 2007;Veenstra, 2009;

Woodley, 2004). Leaders in all university departments are responsible for creating

opportunities for student success (Bean, 1980; Tinto, 1998). Academic success and

persistence are issues that are important from the moment a student is recruited to the

time she receives her diploma. In short, without students there is no institution. Studying
5
the many facets that can contribute to the academic success of student mothers is

important because this subpopulation of non-traditional students entering and re-entering

postsecondary education is doing so in higher numbers than ever before. A 2011 national

Noel-Levitz (2011a) report of over 99,000 online learners, gender divisions in online

programs were 67% female and 33% male and population projections to 2013 indicated

that women’s undergraduate enrollment will increase to 8.9 million or 57 percent of the

undergraduate population” (Peter & Horn, 2005, p. iii)

Student mothers will continue to be a key population in institutional enrollment

numbers.

In order to reach international competitiveness by 2025, the U.S. . . . can’t close

the gap with even its best performance with traditional college students alone.
They must rely on the re-entry pipeline—getting older adults back into the
education system and on track to attaining college degrees. (NCHEMS, 2009, p.
17)

Although there exists quite a bit of research exploring topics like women’s

achievements, adult learners, persistence, retention, online learning strategies, and

mothers who are also students, there is still a need to specifically explore the unique

challenges and successes of mothers learning in online programs. At the time of this

study, researchers had just begun to explore the issues associated with mothering while

attempting to complete an online bachelor’s degree. For example, a qualitative case

study conducted by Werth (2010) described the experiences of eight mothers who

withdrew from online bachelor’s degree programs. However, the research I conducted in

this study sought to understand the lived experiences of mothers who achieved success

and overcame personal and educational barriers to attain online bachelor’s degrees.

Other researchers, such as May (1993), Kramarae (2003), and Furst-Bowe and Dittmann,
6
(2001), also have explored the experiences of mothers in online postsecondary degree

programs. Women with children are a growing subpopulation in online bachelor’s

degree programs and colleges and universities are interested in learning strategies to

improve the persistence and graduation rates of these women (Kramarae, 2003; Furst-

Bowe & Dittman).

As colleges work to meet market needs and the needs of individual students, it is

incumbent upon them to respond to populations that are increasingly older, study part

time, and have minority backgrounds (Zusman, 2005). Institutions of higher education

may have to adjust to the changing needs of an increasingly diverse student body by

adding alternative programs such as night, evening, online, accelerated, and blended

courses. In this regard, student mothers are an important subpopulation to research when

it comes to college and university retention concerns.

7
 CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

This chapter is structured around themes that pertain to major research purposes

and the focus of this study which is student mothers persisting to higher education degree

completion. The review of the literature was thus centered on the current trends in online

education, adult and non-traditional students, the theories of female identity, women in

higher education, student success and retention in distance education, and online learning

and theories of self-direction and motivation. These broad themes contributed greatly in

shaping this study’s conceptual framework, informing the study’s methodology, and

especially, the construction of the interview guide questions.

Broadband and Access to Online Education

According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project’s

Spring Tracking Survey conducted in April 2012, 82% of all American adults used the

Internet and 66% had broadband connections in their homes. This survey provided a

detailed picture of user demographics and gave even more information about Internet

users. Men and women used the Internet in high numbers: 83% and 82% respectively.

Eighty-four percent of the White, non-Hispanic population used the Internet compared to

77% of Black, non-Hispanic and 75% of Hispanic populations. Age was a predictor of

Internet usage. Ninety-seven percent of 18- to 29-year-olds used the Internet but usage

declined slightly as age increased. In addition, Americans with higher incomes and more

education used the Internet in higher numbers. These statistics provided a foundation for

recent trends in Internet-based higher education (“Who’s Online,” 2012).

8
 In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided the National

Telecommunications and Information Administration and the U.S. Department of Rural

Utilities Service $7.2 billion to expand broadband services in the United States

(Instructional Technology Council [ITC], 2011). This was called the Broadband

Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). “The goals of the program were to increase

broadband access and adoption; provide broadband training and support to schools,

colleges, libraries, healthcare providers, and other organizations; improve broadband

access to public safety agencies; and stimulate demand for broadband” (ITC, 2011, p. 4).

On the topic of broadband and education, the Federal Communications Commission

(n.d.) stated the following:

Broadband can be an important tool to help educators, parents and students meet
major challenges in education. The country’s economic welfare and long-term
success depend on improving learning for all students, and broadband-enabled
solutions hold tremendous promise to help reverse patterns of low achievement.
With broadband, students and teachers can expand instruction beyond the
confines of the physical classroom and traditional school day. Broadband can
also provide more customized learning opportunities for students to access high-
quality, low-cost and personally relevant educational material. And broadband
can improve the flow of educational information, allowing teachers, parents and
organizations to make better decisions tied to each student’s needs and abilities.
Improved information flow can also make educational product and service
markets more competitive by allowing school districts and other organizations to
develop or purchase higher-quality educational products and services. (para. 6)

As more Americans use the Internet as part of their daily lives, more services and

information have become available in an online format. Higher education has responded

to the trends in online usage by offering classes online. In 2001, an American

Association of University Women Educational Foundation study conducted by Kramarae

(2001) surfaced the following factors as those impacting the growth in online higher

education enrollments in the United States:

9
  decrease in government subsidies of the public institutions of higher education;
 increase in costs of higher education at both public and private institutions;
 increase in the number of women who are employed;
 reductions in secure, long-term jobs, a change that places a premium on lifelong
learning and learning new skills;
 increases in credential requirements for entry into and continuing work in many
jobs;
 rapid changes in information technologies;
 increases in online business (including education);
 increases in venture capital funding in knowledge enterprises;
 increase in college enrollments;
 increases in attention to lifelong education;
 increases in competition among institutions for education dollars;
 increases in the use of web-based training for workers by the U.S. Army to
distance learning via laptop computers. (p. 4)

Continuous Growth of Online Learning

“Advancements in information technology and communications technology have

made possible new approaches to teaching, learning, and research that were previously

unimagined” (Gumport & Chun, 2005, p. 394). The Sloan Consortium, a national

organization funded by the Arthur P. Sloan Foundation, has been conducting surveys,

providing networking and consulting, and studying online higher education in the United

States since 2002. Another important authority is the ITC Distance Education Survey,

2010. An important difference to note is that the Sloan survey included public, private,

and for-profit as well as two- and four-year institutions, while the ITC Survey looked

primarily at public community colleges. The most obvious commonality between the

two survey reports is the fact that online education is growing rapidly in the United

States. To illustrate this point, the 2002 Sloan survey results were the following:

 Over 1.6 million students took at least one online course during fall 2002.
 Over one-third of these students (578,000) took all of their courses online.
 Among all U.S. higher education students in fall 2002, 11 percent took at least
one online course.
10
  Eighty-one percent of all institutions of higher education offered at least one fully
online or blended course.
 Complete online degree programs were offered by 34 percent of the institutions.
 Sixty-seven percent of institutions answered that online education is a critical
long-term strategy for their institution. (Allen & Seaman, 2003, p.1)

Just four years later, the Sloan Consortium Survey determined exponential growth

in both the number of students and the institutions involved in online higher education.

According to Allen and Seaman (2007), it is also important to note the reported concerns

of academic leaders regarding the persistence and achievement of online students:

 Almost 3.5 million students were taking at least one course during fall 2006; a
nearly 10 percent increase over the number reported in 2005.
 The 9.7 year over year growth rate for online enrollments greatly exceeded the 1.5
percent year over year growth rate of higher education overall.
 Almost twenty percent of all students in higher education were taking at least one
online course in fall 2006.
 All institution types cited improved student access as a top reason for offering
online education.
 Degree completion was an important objective for institutions highly engaged in
online education.
 Lack of discipline on the part of online students was seen as a critical barrier.
 Growth in continuing education and professional education programs was
reflective of non-traditional students’ attraction to online education. (p. 5)

The Sloan Consortium reported a 21% growth in distance learning enrollments,

when comparing the number of students who took at least one online course during the

fall 2009 term to the number of students who took at least one online course during the

previous year. This report noted: “The twenty-one percent growth rate for online

enrollments far exceeds the less than two percent growth of the overall higher education

student population. Nearly thirty percent of higher education students now take at least

one course online” (Allen & Seaman, 2010a or 2010b, p. 2). The 2011 Survey of Online

Learning reported no slowdown in online enrollments; nearly one-third of all college

11
students nationwide were taking at least one online course—more than six million

students total (Allen & Seaman, 2011). Other findings of The Survey of Online Learning

included the following:

 Over 6.1 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall
2010 term, an increase of 560,000 students over the previous year.
 The 10 percent growth rate for online enrollment from 2010-2011 far exceeds the
2 percent growth in the overall higher education student population.
 Thirty-one percent of higher education students now take at least one course
online.
 Reported year-to-year enrollment changes for fully online programs by discipline
show growth in most program areas.
 Academic leaders believe that the level of student satisfaction is equivalent for
online and face-to-face courses.
 Sixty-five percent of higher education institutions now say that online learning is
a critical part of their long-term strategy. (Allen & Seaman, 2011, p. 4)

Disruptive Innovations

Technology and the field of distance learning evolve quickly. By the time this

dissertation is published, what is considered cutting-edge today could be considered

obsolete. Innovation will continue to change the business model of higher education.

Clayton Christensen, a Harvard business professor, coined the phrase “disruptive

innovation.” Applied to higher education and the developments of online education,

Christensen explained:

The theory of disruptive innovation has significant explanatory power in thinking

through the challenges and changes confronting higher education. Disruptive
innovation is the process by which a sector that has previously served only a
limited few because its products and services were complicated, expensive, and
inaccessible, is transformed into one whose products and services are simple,
affordable, and convenient and serves many no matter their wealth or expertise.
The new innovation does so by redefining quality in a simple and often
disparaged application at first and then gradually improves such that it takes more
and more market share over time as it becomes able to tackle more complicated
problems. (Christensen, Horn, Caldera, & Soares, 2011, p. 2)

12
 According to Christensen et al. (2011), the theory of disruptive innovation

involves “key elements or enablers that are particularly salient to the future of higher

education” (p. 2).

The first is a technology enabler. This allows the innovation, which starts in a
simple application and competes first against nonconsumption—by serving
people who were not able to be served or were not desirable to serve—to be
‘upwardly scalable’ and improve year over year without replicating the cost
structure of the old products and services it gradually replaces.
The second element of a disruptive innovation is a business model
innovation. Disruptive innovations are plugged into new models, which allow
organizations to serve a job to be done in the lives of customers at this new lower
price point or in this new, far more convenient fashion without extra cost.
Plugging a disruptive innovation into an existing business model never results in
transformation of the model; instead, the existing model co-opts the innovation to
sustain how it operates. (p. 3)

Confluent to Christensen’s introduction of the disruptive innovation theory to the

world of higher education, new models of educational delivery have emerged which have

challenged not only the traditional structure of higher education, but also the way in

which online higher education has been delivered. Because of the Internet’s continued

expansion, learners all over the world have benefitted from the innovation of educational

entrepreneurs. In 2006, hedge fund manager Salman Khan began tutoring his niece using

a screencast and posting it on YouTube. He soon discovered that others were watching

and learning from him. Within a short time, Khan Academy had been funded by the

Gates Foundation and Google and was established as a “not-for-profit with the goal of

changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone

anywhere” (Khanacademy.org, 2013). At the time of this study, Khan Academy had

4,000 instructional videos available to students worldwide via computer and smartphone

13
applications in the subject areas of math, science, economics, computer science,

humanities, and test prep for kindergarten through college (Khanacademy.org, 2013).

In 2012, Udacity, Coursera, and EdX launched Massive Open Online Courses

(MOOCs) which were free to millions of learners in the United States and around the

world (Welsh & Dragusin, 2013). Some of the world’s leading professors and

universities, including Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and others, have led the way in offering a

college education to the masses.

This phenomenon marks a major shift in digital learning’s expansion. In the

context of a slow economy and rising tuition fees associated with unprecedented
U.S. student debt, MOOCs have the potential to permanently change the
education landscape, particularly entrepreneurship education that is not readily
available around the world in developing countries. (Welsh & Dragusin, 2013,
para. 3)

While MOOCs were first introduced as non-credit bearing courses in 2012, major

advancements were introduced just one year later. At the time of this study, “The three

leading providers, Udacity, EdX and Coursera, are all offering proctored exams, and in

some cases, certification for transfer credit through the American Council on Education”

(Lewen, 2013, para. 19). Also, at the time of this study,

The president pro tem of the California Senate announced the introduction of
legislation allowing students in the state’s public colleges and universities who
cannot get a seat in oversubscribed lower-level classes to earn credit for faculty-
approved online versions, including those from private vendors like edX and
Coursera. (Lewen, 2013, para. 20)

In addition, Coursera had secured contracts with 10 public universities to serve a role in

credit-bearing courses in a multi-campus university system. The initial partnership

focused on opportunities to provide guided coursework for underprepared high school

14
students needing pre-college courses as well as options for course development

(Kolowich, 2013a).

Digital badge initiatives have begun to spring up at colleges and universities

across the United States. “Digital badges and the digital badge system would . . . help

define the skills and knowledge students pick up in an informal way, such as through

internships, online courses, open courseware, competitions, and much more” (Stansbury,

2011, para. 2). These developments are challenging the traditional assumptions about

learning and assessment. While many professors and upper-level administrators are not

yet sold on the use of badges, innovators are coming forward. According to Raths (2013),

“Digital badges are getting a serious look on many university campuses because they

may allow students to demonstrate a greater variety of skills” (para. 5). Mozilla Open

Badges has provided a free digital platform where organizations can create, issue, or

verify badges (Mozilla). A diploma says as much about the institution you attended as it

does about you," notes Bill Wisser, instructional designer in the Graduate School of

Education at Harvard University. "A portfolio gets more granular, and badges can show

individual records of accomplishment" (Raths, 2013, para. 5). Purdue University has

developed a MOOC-like nanotechnology course, and Longwood University has

developed a MOOC course that gives badges for postsecondary readiness. The field of

badges is still relatively new, but the possibilities for widespread use in higher education

and career development are many.

Opinions on the merits of disruptive innovations vary widely in terms of the value

added to society, long term use, student success, retention rates, learning outcomes, and

the place of the college instructor. In addition, the very notion of free elite higher
15
education delivered to the homes of millions of people could be interpreted by some to

threaten the business and power structure of higher education in the United States. While

entrepreneurs such as Andrew Ng of Coursera and Salman Khan of Khan Academy say

they intend their products to be a conduit for education to reach millions of people and to

supplement rather than supplant the role of instructors, critics are leery and talk of

widespread adoption has sent faculty into revolt. For example, after San Jose State

University president pushed to integrate MOOC courses, the California Faculty

Association criticized the university's partnerships with edX and Udacity (Kolowich,

2013b). While the future of the aforementioned innovations is unforeseen, there is little

doubt that disruptive innovations will continue to be introduced as the landscape and

marketplace of higher education continues to evolve over time.

Online Learning: Response to Economic Crisis and Legislative Activity

In 2011, the ITC published significant external developments impacting online

learning programs. The 2010 Distance Education Survey Results cited the ongoing

economic downturn as the number one factor impacting higher education institutions.

State funding for higher education faced cuts in spending (Allen & Seaman, 2011, p. 3).

At the same time, a continued depressed economy also means that more under-skilled and

unemployed adult workers will seek to gain new job skills. For institutions, online

learning has been an efficient way to accommodate increased student populations without

the cost of adding additional classrooms.

State and federal legislation have an impact on online education. The ability of

colleges and universities to offer and grow online programs has been often influenced by

16
legislation pertaining to an institution’s ability to receive federal student financial funds

including offering federal student loans.

The first piece of legislation that would affect the for-profit industry was a rule
established in The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 that would
terminate “institutions with unacceptably high default rates from participation in
the federal loan program. The default rate threshold was set at 35 percent for
fiscal years 1991 and 1992, and 30 percent for 1993. If an institution met or
exceeded the threshold for three consecutive years, then it would become
ineligible to participate in the federal loan program. This threshold would be
lowered to 25 percent in the 1992 HEA reauthorization. The resulting legislation,
which was precipitated by the initial negotiated rulemaking committee, would
include a number of new regulatory rules that affected the for-profit industry. The
1992 HEA included a requirement specifically aimed at the for-profit sector that
stipulated that no more than 85 percent of a school’s revenue come from federal
student aid (the 85/15 rule, but it also included a number of new regulatory rules
that affected the for-profit industry. (Bennett, Lucchesi, & Vedder, 2010, p. 40)

Another important example of legislation specifically aimed at the for-profit

industry was a statute called “The 50-percent rule” (Bennett et al., 2010); however, the

statute also had a significant impact on nonprofit institutions as well. On February 8,

2006, the Higher Education Reconciliation Act (HERA) struck down the 50-percent rule,

a 1992 statute denying students access to Title IV funding if attending institutions

provided more than 50% of courses online and/or enrolled more than half of their

students in online courses (Bennett et al., 2010; Blumenstyk, 2006; Croix, 2006; Dillon,

2006; Lederman, 2005).

These rules included one that would limit distance education by requiring students
to spend at least 50 percent of their course time seated in a classroom (50-percent
rule), a ban on incentive compensation for admissions officials, restrictions on the
establishment of new branch campuses, and the creation of short-lived State
Postsecondary Review Entities (SPREs), among others . . . The cumulative effects
of the new regulatory rules on the for-profit industry were immediate and
significant, as many profit-seeking schools closed up shop, particularly those
located in inner cities. In fact, the number of for-profit schools accredited by one
of the six major national accrediting agencies declined by 5.1 percent the year
after the 1992 HEA, and by 13.9 percent by 1995. In addition, the for- profit
17
 sector’s share of Title IV funds declined in the wake of the legislation. The for-
profit sector’s share of Pell grant dollars declined from 23 to 18 percent between
the 1989–90 and 1992–93 academic years. Its share of subsidized Stafford loans
declined from 22 to 10 percent during the same period. The rules did, however,
have a positive impact on default rates in the for-profit sector, as they declined
from 36 to 24 percent between 1991 and 1993. (Bennett et al., pp. 39, 40)

While the 50-percent rule was originally designed to stop diploma mills and other

fraudulent Internet-based schools from profiting from inexperienced students and federal

student aid, Congress and the George W. Bush administration supported the change as a

way to help more nontraditional students access postsecondary education (Dillon, 2006).

Overturning this statute meant that traditional colleges and universities were free to

expand their online offerings; it also allowed online for-profit colleges and universities to

receive federal financial aid and offer federal loans (Blumenstyk, 2006; Croix, 2006;

Dillon, 2006).

An October 29, 2010 Amendment to the Higher Education Act Program required

institutions to be approved and licensed to operate in every state they offered programs

(ITC, 2011). The failure to enact President Barak Obama’s American Graduation

Initiative proposal did not help online higher education either. The proposal would have

funded $50 million each year for 10 years for the development of new open online

courses and to “explore ways to award academic credit based upon achievement rather

than class hours, and rigorously evaluate the results” (ITC, 2011, p. 4).

Relevant to the powerful presence of lucrative for-profit colleges in the online

education market was Gainful Employment legislation launched by the Obama

Administration in 2010. The Sloan Consortium Survey Report found that nearly two-

thirds of “for-profit institutions . . . were the most likely to have included online learning

18
as part of their strategic plan” (Allen & Seaman, 2010a or 2010b, p. 2). Proposed gainful

employment legislation brought increased scrutiny on the business practices of for-profit

colleges in the United States. In a 2010 U.S. Department of Education press release,

Education Secretary Arne Duncan was quoted as saying:

Let me be clear: we’re moving forward on gainful employment regulations.

While a majority of career colleges play a vital role in training our workforce to
be globally competitive, some bad actors are saddling students with debt they
cannot afford in exchange for degrees and certificates they cannot use. These
schools and their investors benefit from billions in taxpayers subsidies, and in
return, taxpayers have a right to know that all of these programs are providing
solid preparation for a job. (Hamilton, 2010, para. 4)

Gainful Employment legislation brought a lot of attention to for-profits because of

their large presence in online education, but it also caused millions of Americans to

evaluate the value of a college degree in general. The legislation had an impact on

enrollment and financial aid practices at many online institutions. On May 4, 2010,

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) released a Frontline investigation called “College,

Inc.” that exposed some of the most lucrative and aggressive for-profit practices (Smith,

2010). The University of Phoenix and others responded, but College, Inc. had already

started “conversations among a broad range of people” (Hampson, 2010, par. 1). The

conversation about Gainful Employment legislation continued and in July 2012, Judge

Rudolph Contrera’s ruled that the Department of Education’s key provision of the gainful

employment standard was “arbitrary and capricious” (Breslow, 2012, para. 1). For

certain, various legislation addressing for-profit benchmarks for the offering of federal

financial aid funding has been long-standing and has continued to impact online

education providers and students enrolled in online programs.

19
 In an effort to increase the number of students able to access college courses,

California state senator Darrell Steinberg sponsored a bill which would “establish a

statewide platform through which students who have trouble getting into certain low-

level, high-demand classes would take approved online courses offered by providers

outside the state’s higher education system” (Gardner & Young, 2013, para. 2). This

legislation sparked enormous controversy among college administrators, faculty, and

lawmakers, but at the same time, opened a conversation regarding the acceptance of

MOOCs for credit. The future of online education, access, and regulation is largely

influenced by state and national lawmakers.

Adult and Non-Traditional Students

The characteristics of American undergraduate students are extremely diverse and

changing due to shifts in population demographics, popular social views, the economy,

government policies on financial aid and assistance, and institutional initiatives to recruit

a broad student body (Altbach, Berdahl, & Gumport, 2005; Gohn & Albin, 2006;

NCHEMS, 2009). According to Choy (2002), approximately 73% of all undergraduate

students can be characterized as non-traditional. In addition, 50% of online students are

non-traditional, age 26 and older (ITC, 2011). “Nontraditional students are slowly

becoming traditional” (Dickerson & Stiefer, 2006, p. 181). Adult and non-traditional

students are a vital population essential to the success of higher education institutions

and, more broadly, the ability of the United States to remain competitive in the world

market. “Even best performance with traditional college-age students at each stage of the

education pipeline will leave gaps in more than 30 states” (NCHEMS, p. 17). As student

20
population demographics shift, higher educational institutions will be forced to change to

meet a wide variety of needs.

Online higher education is often promoted as a solution to the time constraints

faced by busy adults. Colleges and universities advertise the convenience of doing

homework online in your pajamas. Studies have shown that busy adults find online

education convenient because of work responsibilities and family schedules (Furst-Bowe,

2002; Kramarae, 2001; Muller, 2008). In a study of role contagion, overload, and

conflict among 443 adult university women with families and jobs, Home (1998) found

the following:

Distance education was the only university support which reduced vulnerability.
Flexible, individualized time frames allowed distance education students to
reduce conflict by putting academic work aside when family crises erupted . . .
Distance education increases students' control of time, place, and pace of learning.
(para. 24)

For many busy adults, online education is the preferred modality. Higher

education has responded to widespread Internet usage and the market need for flexible

learning environments by providing an increased number of programs and courses in

online learning and students have responded by enrolling. The number of students taking

online courses has continued to increase at a higher rate than overall higher education

student population growth (Allen & Seaman, 2011).

According to Kim, Sax, Lee, and Hagedorn (2010), a traditional student is

generally categorized as an 18- to 22-year-old who goes to college directly out of high

school, is taking classes full time, and lives on campus. In contrast, non-traditional

students have been identified by an array of attributes that vary across the research and

individual institutional definitions. Variables such as nonresident, part-time, older (25

21
years old or older), non-White, and single parent are also classified as non-traditional

students. Academic factors, such as low entrance grade point averages (GPAs), General

Equivalency Diploma (GED) recipients, and those needing remedial or developmental

courses are also sometimes used to classify students into non-traditional categories. The

National Center for Educational Statistics (1998) identified non-traditional students as

having one or more of the following factors: students not enrolled within the same year as

high school completion, part-time college attendance, financially independent of parents,

employed full time, having children as dependents, and single parenthood.

It is clear that definitions of what constitutes a non-traditional student are varied.

And as student demographics shift, the term “non-traditional” may eventually become

antiquated, considering the fact that “the majority of students enrolled . . . today may be

considered as non-traditional (Kim et al. 2010, p. 406). According to Dickerson and

Stiefer (2006), many traditional students “become nontraditional during the course of

their college careers after a life transition that leads the student to absorb a nontraditional

factor into his or her life” (p. 183).

At the time of this study, student mothers were considered by most researchers

and academic institutions to be non-traditional college students, but student mothers

comprised a large percentage of the student population. Most colleges and universities

have continued to focus programming and policy around the needs of a diminishing

population of traditional-age students. It may be time to consider a new definition of

“traditional college student,” one that includes the large number of mothers entering and

re-entering higher education. It may be time to consider adjusting programs, teaching

22
strategies, instructional design, and policies to help more college student mothers persist

and graduate with bachelor’s degrees.

Women in Higher Education

A typical 21st century college student is likely to be a mid-thirties female (Altbach

et al., 2005; Buchmann & DiPrete, 2006; Kramarae, 2001; Scott, Burns, & Cooney,

1998). Adults over the age of 25 comprise about 44% of the college student population

(Altbach et al., 2005). From 1970 to 2001, the percentage of female undergraduates in

the United States went from 42% to 56% of the college population (Altbach et al., 2005;

Freeman, 2004). “Projections to 2013 indicate that women’s undergraduate enrollment

will increase to 8.9 million or 57 percent of the undergraduate population” (Peter & Horn,

2005, p. iii). Women return to college classes for a variety of reasons including

opportunities for career advancement, the potential to earn higher wages, and personal

satisfaction (Buchmann & DiPrete, 2006; Furst-Bowe & Dittmann, 2001; Kramarae,

2001). “These challenges in the traditional college-going population indicate that child

care services, reentry services, women’s centers, women’s studies, and the incorporation

of gender-related issues in the classroom will continue to be salient for increasing

proportions of campus communities” (Altbach et al., p. 321). This study provides

insights into these issues.

Female Identity Theories

Relevant to the study of student mothers are the concepts of female identity.

There exist numerous theories that explore various facets of personal identity and female

identity in particular (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Gilligan, 1993;

Josselson, 1987, 1992; Sidel, 1990). It is important to note that these theories differ
23
among themselves. This section explores women’s ways of knowing their sense of self

and their role as individuals, mothers, students, friends, partners, employees, and citizens.

Josselson (1987), for instance, focused on the issue of identity in general terms

and claimed:

Identity is a fundamental function of human individualization and distinction.

Erickson is the leading theorist on human identity. Identity is a stable, consistent,
and reliable sense of who one is and what one stands for in the world. It
integrates one’s meaning to oneself and one’s meaning to others; it provides a
match between what one regards as central to oneself and how one is viewed by
significant others in ones’ life. Identity is also a way of preserving the continuity
of the self, linking the past and the present. (p. 10)

As a person moves through her lifetime, identity is formed and refined by that

person’s experiences, choices, roles, relationships, and commitments (Josselson, 1987).

On the other hand, Belenky et. al. (1986) considered that there exists differences in self-

definition that do not necessarily divide along gender lines, yet stated: “It is clear that

many more women than men define themselves in terms of their relationships and

connections to others” (p. 8). Gilligan (1993) pointed out that identity development has

traditionally been measured against a male standard and that female identity development

has been portrayed as a deviation from the norm rather than a distinct theory in its own

right. According to Gilligan (1993), “When women do not conform to the standards of

psychological expectation, the conclusion has generally been that something is wrong

with the women” (p. 14). The issues of female identity are integral to this study.

Hayes and Flannery (1997) conducted a study reviewing major themes among

graduate research studies that investigated women’s lived experiences as college learners.

Themes of personal development, ways of knowing, and marginality dominated their

research. Hayes and Flannery concluded that women grew personally in skills and
24
knowledge, in their identities as intelligent learners, in self-esteem and self-worth, and in

the acquisition of power in the workplace and the community. Additionally, they found

that women in higher education often feel marginalized as learners, as women, and as

racial or ethnic minorities.

Josselson’s Theory

Josselson (1987), a psychologist, conducted a longitudinal phenomenological and

intensive interview study with 60 randomly selected college-educated women through

their mid-life to assess each woman’s progress of developing her identity and her life

history. Josselson identified four main classifications of female identity development

styles or pathways: (a) the Foreclosures, (b) the Identity Achievements, (c) the

Moratoriums, and (d) the Identity Diffusions. Josselson asserted that these four pathways

are not permanent; women revise their pathways throughout their lifetimes. The

following discussion provides descriptions of the four main classifications with the

understanding that women’s lives and identities are influenced by life experiences and

choices.

As a group, the lives of the Foreclosures “were dominated by the effort to feel

loved and cared for. Without exception, these women emphasized the closeness of their

families and their need for the security they had in them” (Josselson, 1987, p. 59). Career

choices were focused on the care of others and, because they are hardworking, capable,

and responsible, the Foreclosures often have successful academic and work careers. The

main satisfaction for this group is found in relationships, family, tradition, and moral

values (Josselson, 1987).

25
 The most significant and unifying characteristic of women that Josselson (1987)

identified as being in the Identity Achievements category is independence. “Just as these

women do not define themselves by their work, they also do not define themselves as

mother of someone or wife of someone. The hallmark of Identity Achievements is the

balance among work, relationships, and interests” (Josselson, 1987, p. 102). The Identity

Achievement women build secure relationships, reject feelings of guilt, and seek to build

self-confidence, independence, and new experiences. “Although not dissatisfied with

their lives, the Identity Achievements remain focused toward the future, anticipating the

new experiences they will have, certain that they will greet new adventures with a

flexible sense of self” (Josselson, 1987, p. 105).

“The Moratorium phase is one of testing and searching for new identities”

(Josselson, 1987, p. 107). The women who are in this phase are emotionally aware of

options in their lives, but are often unsure of how to make their dreams come true or how

to commit. As a group, anxiety and guilt are a pervasive theme because of the difficulty

in separating themselves from the identity of their families. Relationships to other people

give Moratoriums new identifications and they look to others for ideas on how to live in

an effort to discover themselves (Josselson, 1987). Ultimately, these women are

perpetually searching; however, this phase can be experienced for a short time by women

who eventually develop other identities later in their lives (Josselson, 1987).

The Identity Diffusion group is “defined by the absence of attributes—no crisis,

no commitment . . . these women were adrift and lost” (Josselson, 1987, p. 140). Women

in this group are lowest in physiological function, ego development, and in the formation

of intimate relationships but rank highest in anxiety and undifferentiated sex-role

26
orientation. For this group, life experiences do not produce learning or change and this

impulsivity and lack of structure prevents the formation of identity (Josselson, 1987).

Sidel’s Theory

Sidel (1990), a sociologist and social critic, conducted in-depth interviews with

more than 150 women to reveal their attitudes, values, concerns, and hopes for the future

as well as the social, economic, and cultural influences that shape them. Sidel’s study

examined the ideal of the American Dream in female terms rather than the traditional

male context. According to Sidel (1990),

Patterns have changed in recent years: women have entered the labor force in vast
numbers . . . Young women all over the United States have witnessed profound
change in the very nature of family life during their childhood, and their attitudes
have clearly been affected by transformations both within the family and in the
larger society. This attempts to explore the effects of these rapid societal changes
on the attitudes of young women. (p. 8)

After months of interviewing, Sidel (1990) found that the women interviewed fell

into three general categories: (a) New American Dreamers, (b) Neotraditionalists, and (c)

the Outsiders. The New American Dreamers, as a group, are “optimistic, adventurous,

and above all, individualistic” (p. 9). They look forward to a bright future full of

promise, career possibilities, and independence. The characteristic of independence

found in the New American Dreamers is reminiscent of the women Josselson (1987)

categorized as Identity Achievement. New American Dreamers are prepared to work

hard and are willing to embark on journeys on their own.

She is the prototype of today’s young woman—confident, outgoing,

knowledgeable, and involved . . . she is convinced that if she plans carefully,
works hard, and makes the right decisions, she will be a success in her chosen
field; have the material goods she desires; in time, marry if she wishes; and, in all
probability, have children. She plans, as the expression goes, to “have it all.”
(Sidel, 1990, p. 15)
27
While women in this category vary in background, culture, and socioeconomic status,

they share a sense of destiny and self-realization.

The Neotraditionalists “often plan to have careers, or at the very least recognize

that they will probably need to work; but they have a strong, often primary, commitment

to their future roles within the family” (Sidel, 1990, p. 9). Similar to the women

Josselson (1987) identified as Foreclosures, the Neotraditionalists understand that

working is a part of their life; however, they have traditional gender roles in which

husband and family define their primary identity and mission. They are able to articulate

their roles as wives and mothers clearly, but they have less ability to describe their

educational and work goals. Empathy and concern for the well-being of others are

central to the Neotraditionalists as a group (Sidel, 1990).

The Outsiders “cannot envision a future, cannot plan or dream about any aspect of

their lives. They describe themselves as outside the larger society, outside the

mainstream of their community, and often outside of their family unit (Sidel, 1990, p. 9).

Much like Josselson’s (1987) description of Moratoriums, the Outsiders have identities

that are dependent on the influence and pressure of others and the need to be popular and

accepted. For some women, being an Outsider can be a temporary and adolescent state

or a transitional period. For others, being alienated and isolated can lead to a permanent

Outsider existence (Sidel, 1990). For Outsiders, it is difficult to take responsibility for

self, understand the reality of work, commit to others, dream of the future, or execute

daily routines and responsibilities.

28
 Existing female identity development theory served as a conceptual framework to

inform my study. The student mothers who chose to participate in this study shared their

own stories and experiences. As a researcher, I listened carefully to how they made sense

of their lives and defined their own roles and identities as women so I could ascertain

how they connected with or diverged from the female development theories.

Existing female identity theories informed the context of this study and provided

valuable insights into how to articulate the interview questions that were posed to the

participants in this study. The student mothers who chose to participate in this study

shared their points of view and experiences with regard to the formation and development

of their personal identities.

Motherhood and Educational Attainment

In order to better understand the lived experiences of mothers in online bachelor’s

degree programs, it is important to explore the identities, cultural assumptions, and

expectations of mothers within the larger context of American culture. “As an ideology,

motherhood encompasses the biological act of producing a child, but more specifically

evokes the social relationship that is characterized by emotional intensity, selflessness,

nurturing, and protection” (Stearney, 1994, p. 146). For many women, the experience of

becoming a mother is a major turning point in their lives. “Often parenthood initiates an

epistemological revolution. It is as if this act of creation ushers in a whole new view of

one’s creative capacities” (Belenky et al., 1986, p. 35).

Motherhood is often an expected and natural goal associated with an ethic of

nurturing, care, unconditional love, idealism, and self-sacrifice (Josselson, 1992; Lynch,

2008; Stearney, 1994). Yet, these idealistic attributes, while promoted by society, are
29
rarely the reality of women who are mothers. Once a woman becomes a mother, she is

influenced by social norms and pressures associated with that role, but women are often

unable to meet every quixotic expectation. According to Lynch (2008),

The underlying assumption is that the physiological ability of women to bear

children is equated with the exclusive ability to raise them. The underlying
assumption is that the child absolutely requires constant nurture by a single
primary caretaker, and that the mother is the best person for the job. (p. 586)

The pressures associated with being a good mother are intensified for women who are

required to spend long hours meeting the demands of jobs and college classes (Deutsch &

Schmertz, 2011; Kramarae, 2001; Marks & Houston, 2002; Muller, 2008; Williams,

2000).

In a study about men and women’s college persistence, Leppel (2002) found that

married students often have extended time to reach degree attainment because they tend

to take fewer courses. Leppel discovered that while married students are motivated to

complete, the time and strain associated with longer periods of study has a negative effect

on persistence (p. 443). Leppel (2002) found that “children appear to be a stronger

motivator toward persistence for single women. The effect of marriage and children

together is negative for both men and women” (p. 443). Lower persistence rates among

married students result from inadequate spousal support, emotional support, and lack of

help with housework and childcare (Hostetler, Sweet, & Moen, 2007; Leppel, 2002).

While motherhood is often idealized, it is also true that motherhood plays a

devalued role in American society (Josselson, 1992). As a result, women have tried to

gain more respect by linguistically manipulating the description of their jobs in the home.

For example, the descriptors stay-at-home mom and housewife have been changed to

30
domestic engineer, domestic goddess, family manager, or other more prestigious-

sounding labels. While women may love their children and value their roles as mothers,

many feel they are expected to also work outside the home (Josselson, 1987; Sidel,

1990). “Caretaking jobs are usually the lowest paid and afforded the least respect”

(Josselson, 1992, p. 199). For example, teachers, nurses, and social workers are some of

the lowest paid professions that require at least a bachelor’s degree. As Josselson (1992)

put it, “Those of us in the ‘helping sciences’ (such as medicine and psychotherapy)

publicly emphasize the ‘science’ part of what we do; and we do not acknowledge too

openly that we are in the business of taking care” (p. 199). This is because the role of

caretaker is not seen as valuable work in a patriarchal society (Josselson, 1992).

Cultural assumptions about motherhood affect women in the home, at work, and

in college. In a study of 30 graduate student mothers, Lynch (2008) found the following:

The way in which motherhood is conceptualized in the dominant culture in the

United States helps explain the puzzle of graduate student mother’s high attrition
rates. American women construct their lives in reference to an ideology of
‘intensive mothering.’ This ideology, in turn, permeates the larger cultural milieu
and affects the opportunities offered to women with children. (p. 602)

Lynch also discovered that challenges associated with financial aid, health insurance,

childcare, and feeling unsupported by faculty and academic departments contributed to

attrition rates for student mothers. The strain of multiple roles can increase stress and

women drop out of college more often than men for non-academic reasons (Home, 1998;

Lynch, 2008).

There are many factors that shape the way women develop their educational

goals, career aspirations, motherhood, and family lives. Although women have many

more opportunities today than their grandmothers had, gender stereotypes still have a
31
strong presence and often a defining role in women’s educational and career choices

(Deutsch & Schmertz, 2011). Women who prioritize mothering often choose careers

such as nursing or teaching because they, and society at large, still see these careers as

traditionally female and family appropriate. Males still comprise the majority of students

in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, while females

comprise the majority of students in English, modern or foreign languages, and social

studies disciplines (Marks & Houston, 2002).

Factors that shape girls’ perceptions of school and career choices are influenced

by families, peers, society, and the school system (Deutsch & Schmertz, 2011; Marks &

Houston, 2002; Stage & Hossler, 1989). “Returning to school may conflict with their

identities as wives and mothers, and also with cultural prescriptions for appropriate

‘motherly’ behavior” (Hayes & Flannery, 1997, para. 12). While it is clear that women

today have many more opportunities than did their grandmothers, it is also apparent that

multiple roles and responsibilities can be demanding and difficult to reconcile.

Women as Online Learners

Who are the women enrolled in online courses? The average distance learner is

female, mid-thirties, working, and parenting (Altbach et al., 2005; Deutsch & Schmertz,

2011; Furst-Bowe & Dittmann, 2001; Instructional Technology Council, 2011;

Kramarae, 2001; Muller, 2008; Peter & Horn, 2005). “Most studies of distance learners

in North American higher education institutions report that more women than men are

enrolled in distance education courses” (Furst-Bowe, 2002, p. 2). According to a 2011

national Noel-Levitz (2011a) report of online learners, gender divisions in online

programs were 67% female and 33% male. The for-profit sector, which delivers a large
32
percentage of its course offerings online, reported a 9.6% annualized growth rate of

female students compared to 5.9% for males in 2007 alone. Women see online education

as a viable college choice.

Reasons for returning to college vary among women and so do their reasons for

enrolling in online courses instead of traditional face-to-face courses. A study by Furst-

Bowes and Dittmann (2001) found that many women returned to college “primarily for

job-related reasons and that they are deliberately selecting programs delivered via

distance education because of the convenience associated with on-line courses” (p. 87).

Clearly, women mothers enrolled in online courses represent a unique group of students

worthy of study in depth and in detail.

Many women prefer face-to face classes, but their lives make it difficult or

impossible to attend in a traditional college setting (Furst-Bowe & Dittmann, 2001;

Kramarae, 2001; Muller, 2008). Some women prefer online learning for certain subjects

or disciplines and in-class instruction for other classes (Kramarae, 2001). Muller (2008)

found that female online students missed the context clues and experiential learning

activities of a traditional classroom setting. In contrast, May (1993) found that women

taking distance learning courses preferred learning independently rather than working in

online groups, but the same women enjoyed talking to friends and family about their

learning.

A study by Kramarae (2001) found that most women who enroll in online courses

do so for a variety of reasons, including flexibility to coordinate school with other

responsibilities at home and at work, reduced cost and time normally associated with a

commute to and from a traditional college, and the ability to self-pace. A few female
33
participants in Kramarae’s study reported that they enrolled in online courses because

they prefer online courses to traditional settings.

The barriers to online higher education success are many and varied for the

women who enroll in online courses (Deutsch & Schmertz, 2011; Gerson, 1985; Hardin,

2008). Muller (2008) conducted a study that found a “complexity of variables affecting

learners’ persistence to graduation. Findings suggested that multiple responsibilities and

insufficient interaction with faculty, technology, and coursework ranked highest as

barriers to women’s persistence” (p. 1). Other factors include feelings of isolation, time

constraints, lack of support from family and their college, and financial concerns

(Deutsch & Schmertz, 2011; Furst-Bowe & Dittmann, 2001; Gerson, 1985; Gerstel,

2000; Gigliotti & Huff, 1995; Kramarae, 2001; Muller, 2008).

Additional factors that present challenges to academic success include women’s

abilities to balance “multiple responsibilities of income provider, parent, and student”

(Kramarae, 2001, p. 31). Women in the United States perform a disproportionately

greater percentage of the childcare and relative care because of traditional gender

divisions of labor (Deutsch & Schmertz, 2011; Gerson, 1985; Muller, 2008; von

Prummer, 2000; Williams, 2000). “These multiple commitments in women’s lives make

successful completion of online courses a challenge” (Muller, 2008, p. 1). Balancing job

responsibilities, schoolwork, housework, and parenting responsibilities is not easy

(Gerstel, 2000). “Childbirth is only the beginning. Producing a baby may take nine

months, but raising a child takes 20 years” (Williams, 2000, p. 1).

Child and homecare responsibilities cut into time a mother is able to devote to

online studies. Kramarae (2001) coined the phrase “third shift” to describe the late night
34
hours women spend working on their online courses. “For many women participating in

distance education, the third shift of student life occurs late at night or early in the

morning, after the day’s paid work and household/family work” (Kramarae, 2001, p. 33).

“In the United States, higher education providers of online programs . . . often market to

working women without necessarily taking into account that women continue to be

primary caretakers of children and other family members” (Muller, 2008, p. 13). Muller

discovered that women’s strong motivation to complete their degrees, their engagement

in learning communities, and their appreciation for the convenience of an online degree-

completion opportunity facilitated persistence for women in online degree programs.

While online classes do offer flexibility, making time for online education can still be

challenging for women who juggle multiple roles.

Student Success and Retention in Distance Education

Student retention is financially important for institutions of higher education.

According to Leppel (2002),

It takes four students who leave prior to their sophomore year to produce as much
tuition revenue as one student who stays for four years. Moreover, if it is easier to
keep a customer than to attract a new one, education dollars can be more
efficiently spent retaining students than recruiting replacements. (p. 2)

It is clear that administrators are interested in improving retention for online programs in

higher education. Retention of online students is one of the top “Student Challenges”

cited in the Instructional Technology Council (2011) study:

Online administrators continue to deal with the issue of lower student retention or
completion rates than traditional face-to-face instruction. During the early years
of online education, retention/completion could easily fall below 50 percent.
However, colleges have progressed in addressing this challenge—in 2010,
administrators reported that the average retention or completion rate for online
classes was 69 percent, compared to 75 percent for traditional face-to-face
35
 courses. Based on six years of data, the trend in online retention has continued to
improve, but challenges remain. (p. 19)

A thorough discussion of the literature on student motivation and retention was

essential for this study. Hence, I researched well-known theorists and practices as well as

new, cutting-edge technology.

The Importance of Family and Parental Involvement

An important body of research links parental and family involvement with the

academic success of college students (Eckstrom, 1985; Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler,

1997; Jun & Colyer, 2002; Moles, 1993; Stage & Hossler, 1989; Tierney, 2002; Tierney

& Jun, 1999, 2001). According to Tierney (2002), “family involvement is crucial to the

educational success of a child. Indeed, the belief that families should be involved in their

children’s learning has reached near paradoxical status” (p. 592).

Parental involvement takes on different forms. Parents may attend events on

campus, or get involved in the campus community. Less overtly, “parents transmit their

skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values to children by modeling acceptable behavior,

guiding their activities, and giving direct instruction” (Moles, 1993, p. 22). Researchers

have found differences in both parental expectations for educational attainment and the

way in which those expectations affect males and females. For example, Stage and

Hossler (1989) found the following:

For male students, neither discussion with parents about postsecondary education
nor parental level of saving has significant direct effects upon their postsecondary
educational aspirations. The frequency with which female students discussed
college with their parents, however, does have a strong positive effect on their
educational plans. (p. 312)

Furthermore, Stage and Hossler (1989) noted that parental encouragement is

36
positively associated with postsecondary educational plans, but there were differences for

female and male children. “The level of mother’s education exerted the greatest amount

of influence on the postsecondary participation rates of their children (Stage & Hossler,

1989, p. 311). In addition, Stage and Hossler reported that the educational attainment of

fathers had more of a positive influence on a male child than upon a female child because

the fathers discussed college and saved more money for the education of their male

children more so than they did for their female children.

Student Involvement Theories

Researchers agree that student involvement, particularly as it relates to traditional

age students at traditional four-year institutions and classroom environments, matters

when it comes to academic success and retention (Tinto, 1997; Astin, 1999; Rendón,

1994; Schlossberg, 1989). Astin (1999) posited that factors such as living in a dormitory,

working part time on campus, being involved in a club or organization, participation in

sports or music or other extracurricular activities increase a student’s chances of being

successful and graduating from college (p. 523). Tinto (1997) asserted that learning

communities positively influenced student involvement, learning, and persistence.

Leppel (2002) suggested that for women,

GPA also appears to increase with involvement. The finding that the most
involved women have the highest predicted GPAs may indicate that highly
involved women are well-integrated academically, not just socially. That result is
consistent with Spady’s (1971) conclusion that women are more concerned than
men with intrinsic factors like intellectual development. (p. 444)

According to Richmond (1986), Astin’s theory of student involvement is based on

the idea that the more students are psychologically and physically interactive with their

education, the more likely they will be successful and satisfied with their college
37
experience. While recognizing motivation as an important aspect of student involvement,

Astin’s (1999) theory focused primarily on a student’s behavior. “I am emphasizing that

the behavioral aspects, in my judgment, are critical: It is not so much what the individual

thinks or feels, but what the individual does, how he or she behaves, that defines and

identifies involvement” (Astin, 1999, p. 519). Astin (1999) clarified student involvement

as the following:

The amount of physical and psychological energy that the student devotes to the
academic experience. Thus, a highly involved student is one who, for example,
devotes considerable energy to studying, spends much time on campus,
participates actively in student organizations, and interacts frequently with faculty
members and other students. Conversely, a typical uninvolved student neglects
studies, spends little time on campus, abstains from extracurricular activities, and
has infrequent contact with faculty members or other students. (p. 518)

The greater a student’s involvement in his or her college community, the greater

chance he or she will persist and graduate (Astin, 1984, 1985; Tinto, 1975, 1993, 1997;

Tinto & Russo, 1994; Spady, 1970, 1971). Spady (1970, 1971) first emphasized the

importance of social integration, which was influenced by friendships, support,

intellectual development, shared academic values, and academic integration. Tinto

(1975, 1993, 1997) and Tinto and Russo (1994) further emphasized that the more a

student is socially and intellectually integrated into the culture of the institution, the

greater her chances of persisting and graduating. Astin’s (1984, 1985) theories of student

development and student involvement are foundations for effective college learning

environments.

Student Involvement Online

Student involvement is often impossible for online mothers who do not live near a

physical campus. Astin (1999) and Tinto (1997) focused predominantly on traditional
38
age students in on-campus programs. However, their studies are relevant as researchers

who explored ways to help online students succeed academically. Rovai (2002) and

DiRamio and Wolverton (2006) explored the possibilities of marrying learning

communities and distance education to improve attrition rates in online classes.

Studies (Cadima, Ojeda, & Monguet, 2010; Park, Kee, & Velenzuela, 2009; Paul,

Baker, & Cochran, 2012) have demonstrated the effects of social media on retention,

satisfaction, and academic performance in online courses. For instance, Park, Kee, and

Venezuela (2009) pointed out that “individuals who participate in Facebook Groups to

satisfy socializing needs are generally interested in meeting and talking with others as

well as getting peer support and a sense of community” (p. 731). Cadima, Ojeda, and

Monguet (2012) agreed that “social networks play an essential role in learning

environments as a key channel for knowledge sharing and students’ support” (p. 296).

Social media is a way for all students to be involved with their college communities at a

distance.

The implications of Astin’s (1999) theories of student development and student

involvement may be key to understanding drop-out rates of online students who are not

physically involved with their college campus community. Astin’s studies also imply

that academically successful online students have developed alternative ways to be

involved in their online campus communities, such as through social media, or that being

involved was not a factor in their academic success.

Motivational Course Design

Studies focusing on the effects of course design on motivation, retention,

performance, and student confidence, and satisfaction in online courses have been
39
abundant (Keller, 1987, 1999; Keller & Suzuki, 2004; Martens, Gulikers, & Bastiaens,

2004; Pittenger & Doering, 2010; Sankaran & Bui, 2001). In particular, motivational

course design uses elements that keep students engaged, provide necessary scaffolding,

communicate clear objectives, and use student assessments that meet the objectives

(Keller, 1987, 1999). Keller (2008) asserted that a student’s motivation to learn is

promoted when a learner’s curiosity is aroused due to a perceived gap in current

knowledge, when the knowledge to be learned is perceived to be meaningfully related to

a learner’s goal, when a learner believes she can succeed in mastering the learning task,

when a learner anticipates and experiences satisfying outcomes to a learning task, and

when learners employ volitional, self-regulatory strategies to protect their intentions (pp.

177–178).

Keller (1987, 1999) also claimed that course design should motivate students to

stay engaged with the course. Keller (1987) first developed the ARCS model comprised

of four necessary parts: attention (A), relevance (R), confidence (C), and satisfaction (S).

Each of these required elements is designed to encourage students’ motivation and

participation in the online learning environment. According to Pittenger and Doering

(2010):

Motivational design, when applied to distance education, attempts to create an

online learning environment that attracts a student’s attention and holds that
engagement by supporting competence, establishing relevance to the students’
lives, and facilitating learning through varied enjoyable activities over which
students have control. ( p. 276)

Non-traditional course design, like online gaming and simulation, has been

utilized to complement and serve as an alternative for traditional teaching strategies in

fields such as industrial engineering and industrial management (Chang, Peng, & Chao,
40
2010; Randel, Morris, Wetzel, & Whitehill, 1992). Simulation and gaming allow

students to put into practice and contextualize the technical and decision-making skills

necessary to be successful in their future jobs (Chang, Peng, & Chao, 2010). “Research

from education, psychology, and anthropology suggests that play is a powerful mediator

for learning throughout a person’s life. The time has come to couple the ever increasing

processing capabilities of computers with the advantages of play” (Rieber, 1996, p. 43).

While more research is needed to perfect online courses that integrate motivational

design elements in a range of disciplines, the literature in this field has recognized the

need for more interaction, stimulation, and attraction to online students.

Institutional Factors Affecting Online Student Success and Retention

Higher education institutions across the nation provide online courses to more

than 6.1 million students (Allen & Seaman, 2011). Creating an environment that helps

online students succeed academically and continue to graduation is challenging. Despite

their best efforts and the continued growth of online programs, one of the biggest

challenges for higher education leaders is that student retention in online programs is

lower than retention in traditional campus-based programs (DiRamio & Wolverton, 2006;

Heyman, 2010; Hoyer, 2006).

Satisfied students are more likely to be successful students. Research indicates

that institutions with more satisfied students have higher graduation rates, lower
loan default rates, and higher alumni giving. Satisfaction with an institution
includes a combination of academic factors as well as areas related to student
services. (Noel-Levitz, 2011a, p. 2)

In this regard, the research on best practices for online student success and

retention conducted by Heyman (2010) is worth noting. Heyman’s study revealed social

and academic experiences, perceptions, opinions, and concerns of online education

41
experts as well as recommended practices that may contribute to student retention in fully

online programs. Common themes emerged from the data: (a) student support and

connection with the institution; (b) the quality of interaction between faculty and

students; (c) student self-discipline; (d) instructor response time and ongoing faculty

presence and activity in online courses; (e) quality of the academic program; and (f)

quality of interaction between faculty and students.

Providing academic and student services for online students are common

challenges among community colleges nationwide. According to the ITC 2010 Distance

Education Survey results, the number one challenge facing Distance Education Program

Administrators at community colleges from 2004–2010 has been a lack of staff to

conduct training and a lack of technical assistance. On the 2009 and 2010 surveys, the

second and third greatest challenges were reported as inadequate assessment of distance

education classes and inadequate student services for distance education students (ITC,

2011, p. 9).

Online program administrators often struggle to offer student services equal to the

services available to on-campus students (LaPaluda, 2003; Raphel, 2006; Shea &

Armitage, 2002). The most common services provided are financial aid, admissions, and

registration; however, online learners need access to other student support services such

as orientation, tutoring, disabilities services, academic advisement, personal counseling,

career counseling, and library services. LaPaluda (2003) stated that “support readily

available to on-campus students is lacking for distance learners and creating further

isolation that can be discouraging and lead to failure” (p. 120). Online learners are often

unable to access on-campus student services (Raphel, 2006). Online students pay tuition,
42
and they expect that services will be equally available to them in an online format; it is

unrealistic to expect online students to come to campus to access student services

(LaPaluda, 2003; Shea & Armitage, 2002). According to Shea and Armitage (2003),

“students deserve access to a full array of student services and until we provide these we

cannot expect to see the same levels of student success and retention between on-campus

and off-campus courses” (p. 2).

According to the ITC (2011), typical online programs are the primary source of

student enrollment growth at many institutions. The majority of online program

administrators report that their departments are under-staffed, they work in cramped

conditions, and they have inadequate budget allocations. While online education

departments are often agents of change in the areas of faculty training, technology

integration, professional development, assessment, design, course quality, and student

learning, they struggle to gain understanding and support from campus leaders often due

to a general disconnect from technology (ITC, 2011).

Faculty teaching online courses have a strong influence on student achievement.

According to Tinto (1997),

Faculty inside and outside the classroom serves directly to shape learning and
persistence, but also because their actions, framed by pedagogical assumptions,
shape the nature of classroom communities and influence the degree and manner
in which students become involved in learning. (p. 617)

Even though 64% of courses are taught by full-time faculty, finding qualified

online faculty to teach online courses can be difficult (ITC, 2011). Many colleges report

discomfort with employing full-time faculty who are not physically working on campus

or even in the local community, but they continue to recruit statewide, regionally, or

43
nationally (ITC, 2011). According to Artino and Stephens (2006), online instructors are

challenged when it comes to understanding student engagement with online materials

because they lack the traditional classroom cues such as facial gestures, fidgeting, and

attendance. Proactive techniques, such as online surveys, are recommended to help

online instructors ascertain student cognition, motivation, behavior, and weaknesses

(Artino, 2008).

Faculty development is important. Only 63% of online program administrators

reported requiring faculty to participate in training programs (ITC, 2011). According to

Grant and Thornton (2007), there are seven best teaching practices in an online

classroom:

1. Encourage staff-student contact.

2. Encourage cooperation among students.
3. Encourage active learning.
4. Give prompt feedback.
5. Increase time on task.
6. Communicate high expectations.
7. Respect diverse talents and ways of learning. (Discussion section, para. 3)

“Institutions that make a conscious decision to assist faculty in the transition process and

provide opportunities to discover mechanisms for optimizing best practices for teaching

online will compete more favorably for adult students than those that do not” (Grant &

Thornton, 2007, Implications section, para. 1).

Despite institutional challenges, the majority of online learners reported their

online program had met their expectations. The 2011 National Online Learners Priorities

Report (2011a) stated:

Sixty-three percent feel that it has exceeded their expectations, and 25 percent of
online learners feel the experience has met their expectations. Seventy- three
percent of online learners are satisfied or very satisfied with their experience, and
44
 76 percent indicate that they would probably or definitely re-enroll in the program
if they had to do it over again. Overall, this indicates that students are very
pleased with their online experience. As indicated in the list of challenges which
appeared earlier in this report, there is still room for improvement in some key
areas, but overall, colleges are performing well in online learning. (p. 13)

Mattering Theory. Theories of how student involvement is achieved have also

been developed. For example, Schlossberg (1989) developed the mattering theory.

“Mattering is a motive: the feeling that others depend on us, are interested in us, are

concerned with our fate, or experience us as an ego-extension exercises a powerful

influence on our actions” (Schlossberg, 1989, as cited in Rosenberg & McCullough,

1981, p. 165.) Schlossberg’s (1989) mattering theory is divided into five dimensions:

1. Attention: “The most elementary form of mattering is the feeling that one
commands the interest or notice of another person” (Schlossberg, 1989, as
cited in Rosenberg & McCullough, 1981, p. 164).
2. Importance: “To believe that the other person cares about what we want,
think, and do, or is concerned with our fate, is to matter. (Schlossberg,
1989, as cited in Rosenberg & McCullough, 1981, p. 64).
3. Ego-Extension: “Ego-extension refers to the feeling that other people will
be proud of our accomplishments or saddened by our failures. In other
words, we feel that our success will be the success of another and our
failure, the other’s failure. Although knowing that our failures are critical
to another can be a burden, it also reconfirms that we matter to someone”
(Schlossberg, 1989, p. 4).
4. Dependence: According to Schlossberg (1989), people’s behavior is
influenced by their dependence on others as well as other peoples’
dependence on themselves (p. 4).
5. Appreciation: Schlossberg (1989) found that the participants of her study
expressed their need to feel as though their efforts were appreciated (p. 4).

Validation Theory. Validation theory was developed as a result of a student

success study co-authored by Patrick Terenzini, Lee Upcraft, Susan B. Millar, Romero

Jalomo, Kevin Allison, and Patti Gregg and Laura I. Rendón (1994). According to

Rendón (1994), “validation is and enabling, confirming, and supportive process initiated

45
by in-and-out-of-class agents that fosters academic and interpersonal development” (p.

44). According to Rendón Linares and Munoz (2011),

Validation theory provides a framework that faculty and staff can employ to work
with students in a way that gives them agency, affirmation, self-worth, and
liberation from past invalidation. The most vulnerable students will likely benefit
from external validation that can serve as the means to move students toward
gaining internal strength resulting in increased confidence and agency in shaping
their own lives. As such, both external affirmation and internal
acknowledgements of self-competence are important in shaping academic
success. What is being theorized is that for many low-income first-generation
students, external validation is initially needed to move students toward
acknowledgement of their own internal self-capableness and potentiality. (p. 3)

Personal Factors Affecting Student Success and Retention

Challenges to successful college completion are many for non-traditional

students. According to the March 2010 Research Brief: Barriers to College for High-

Achieving Students, the highest-achieving underrepresented students, such as low-income

students, students of color, and first generation college students, are far less likely to

attend and graduate from college than the highest-achieving students from middle and

high-income families (Breakthrough Collaborative, 2010). While there is no clear-cut

formula that ensures a student will persist and graduate from college, there are personal

factors that influence a student’s chances of being successful. The following section

discusses the relevant literature on this topic.

Barriers such as childcare, time constraints, and cost are hindrances that make it

very difficult for people to participate and succeed in higher education (Gigliotti & Huff,

1995; Matus-Grossman, Gooden, & Associates, 2002; Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009;

Scott et al., 1998). Students who have responsibilities such as work and family

responsibilities often take longer to complete a degree because of stop-outs and part-time
46
status (Matus-Grossman et. al., 2002. Financial aid—to cover tuition and related costs

and to replace lost wages—is often a major factor that affects students’ ability to enroll

and complete higher education.

A 2010 study by Matus-Grossman et al. used information gathered in focus

groups at six community colleges from current, former, and potential students, most of

them single parents, to explore the institutional and personal access and retention issues

they faced as they sought a workable balance of college, work, and family

responsibilities. These findings are important for the community colleges, employers,

and policymakers who work with these nontraditional students. Matus-Grossman et al.

(2010) found the following:

Participants’ lives were fragile, and a single event might lead to dropping out or
taking time off from college. Major personal factors included child care issues
(such as its availability and quality, parents’ comfort level with the number of
hours a child was in care, and varying degrees of understanding on the part of
instructors when child care emergencies arose); family and peer relationships
(which, when supportive, can make a huge difference); and employers’ support
(such as flexible work schedules). Some participants mentioned other factors,
including discrimination, housing, transportation, and physical or mental health
issues (involving themselves or close family members). (p. 15)

Although there are often services such as on-campus tutoring, support services,

counseling, governmental housing assistance, welfare, and food stamps, students are not

always aware of these services or able to access them when needed. Without needed

support during periods of stress or transition, nontraditional students are highly likely to

leave college without a degree (Dickerson & Stiefer, 2006). In a study of nontraditional

student attrition, Choy (2002) found:

Of students who had begun any type of higher education with a stated goal to
complete a bachelor’s degree, 50 percent of highly nontraditional students were
no longer enrolled at an institution or had not completed the degree after three
47
 years compared to 42 percent of moderately nontraditional students, 23 percent of
minimally nontraditional students, and 12 percent of traditional students. (as cited
in Dickerson & Stiefer, p. 185)

With the increase in non-traditional students in postsecondary education, it is

important for institutions to recognize the unique characteristics and various needs of

those who comprise this important subpopulation. Supporting students who have various

levels of academic preparedness, college readiness, motivation as well as various levels

of family support and financial resources is a challenge for higher education. Supporting

students in times of stress and transition is important for retention and academic success.

In each phase of a student’s lifecycle, including admissions, financial aid, orientation,

academic advising, classroom experiences, support services, and social events, students

must be able to foster relationships in a relaxed and safe environment (Dickerson &

Stiefer, 2006).

Online Learning and Theories of Self-Direction and Motivation

Researchers and educators are interested in motivational patterns that promote the

establishment, maintenance, and attainment of personally challenging and personally

valued achievement goals (Artino, 2008; Dweck, 1986). Dweck (1986) noted:

Achievement motivation involves a particular class of goals—those involving

competence—and these goals appear to fall into two classes: (a) learning goals, in
which individuals seek to increase their competence, to understand or master
something new, and (b) performance goals, in which individuals seek to gain
favorable judgments of their competence or avoid negative judgments of their
competence. (p. 1040)

While there are many theories of educational motivation and persistence, those

that will be discussed in the following sections have received increased attention and

interest because of their relevance for online learning and retention. According to Artino

48
(2008), “Online learners must take greater responsibility for the management and control

of their own academic progress” (p. 38). The theories presented provided a foundation

for the analysis of data gleaned during the course of this study. The three theories of

academic motivation and achievement that are discussed are: self-efficacy theory, self-

regulated learning theory, and control-value theory of achievement emotions.

Self-Efficacy Theory

Self-efficacy is defined by Bandura (1977) as “peoples’ judgments of their

capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types

of performances” (as cited in Schunk, 1991, p. 1). The concept of self-efficacy and

personal expectancy is thought to influence a person’s choices and behaviors such as

investigation, direction, effort, and persistence (Bandura & Cervone, 1983; Dweck, 1986;

Schunk, 1991). “Although motivation is essential to learning no matter the context, it is

particularly critical when learning online where whether students engage the material,

how, and how long, is entirely within their control” (Sansone, Fraughton, Zachary,

Butner, & Heiner, 2011, p. 200). According to Bandura (1997) a person’s perception of

self-efficacy regulates her cognition, motivation, mood, and affect.

 Cognitive: People with high self-efficacy are more likely to have high aspirations,
take long views, think soundly, set themselves difficult challenges, and commit
themselves firmly to meeting those challenges.
 Motivational: People motivate themselves by forming beliefs about what they can
do, anticipating likely outcomes, setting goals, and planning courses of action.
Self-efficacy beliefs determine the goals people set for themselves, how much
effort they expend, how long they persevere, and how resilient they are in the face
of failures and setbacks.
 Mood or Affect: How much stress or depression people experience in threatening
or difficult situations depends largely on how well they think they can cope.
People with high self-efficacy are able to relax, divert their attention, calm
themselves, and seek support from friends, family, and others. For someone who

49
 is confident of getting relief in these ways, anxiety and sadness are easier to
tolerate. (para. 2–4)

Students acquire ability information from others; teachers, parents, and peers

influence an individual’s self-efficacy (Schunk, 1990, 1991). However, feedback from

external sources is not as impactful as personal accomplishments and patterns of success

and failure (Dweck, 1986; Salanova, Martinez, & Llorens, 2012; Schunk, 1991).

Self-efficacy theory postulates that people acquire information to appraise

efficacy from their performance accomplishments, vicarious (observational)
experiences, forms of persuasion, and physiological indexes. An individual’s
own performances offer the most reliable guides for assessing efficacy. Successes
raise efficacy and failure lowers it, but once a strong sense of efficacy is
developed, a failure may not have much impact. (Schunk, 1991, p. 208)

A longitudinal study of 527 university students tested the impact that academic

self-efficacy has on future academic success. Salanova et al. (2012) confirmed that past

academic success has a positive influence on academic self-efficacy and future academic

success when self-efficacy is related with an internal attribution. According to Bandura

and Cervone (2012), the two cognitively-based mechanisms of motivation are a student’s

ability to predict future consequences and the ability to internally evaluate one’s own

performance.

The theory of self-efficacy and educational motivation is related to an individual’s

perception of self-control, goal-setting, self-concept, self-esteem, self-worth, persistence,

effort expended, reward anticipation, and rewards (Bandura & Cervone, 1983; Dweck,

1986; Schraw, 2010; Schunk, 1991). When a student perceives she is learning and

making progress, her motivation is enhanced. This, in turn, may cause the student to

work harder to master a task, and as she becomes more skillful and successful, her self-

efficacy is improved. “Heightened self-efficacy sustains motivation and improves skill

50
development” (Schunk, 1991, p. 213). Self-efficacy is mentioned as an important factor

in online student learning, motivation, and self-regulated learning (Sansone et al., 2011).

Self-Regulated Learning Theory

Self-regulated learning (SRL), also referred to as academic self-regulation, is an

important framework for understanding the functioning of independent learners in online

classrooms (Artino, 2008; Bernacki, Byrnes, & Cromley, 2012; Sansone et al., 2011;

Sansone, Smith, Thoman, & MacNamara, 2012; Schraw, 2010). Pintrich (2000), Winne

and Hadwin (1998), and Zimmerman (2000) posited that people who approach learning

tasks in a thoughtful and strategic way are more likely to increase their knowledge.

According to Pintrich (2000), self-regulated learning is an “application of general models

of regulation and self-regulation to issues of learning, in particular, academic learning

that takes place in school or classroom contexts” (p. 451).

Winne and Hadwin (1998) and Zimmerman (2000) described self-regulated

learning as a sequence of events. According to Winne and Hadwin, self-regulating

learners (a) define the task at hand, (b) set goals and develop a plan for their attainment,

(c) enact those tactics, and (d) monitor their progress toward goal attainment against a

pre-conceived set of internal standards. Zimmerman described the self-regulation

process as stages of forethought, performance, and self-reflection. Effective self-

regulated learners are “goal-driven, motivated, independent, and metacognitively active

participants in their own learning” (Azevedo, 2005, p. 202). Competent self-regulated

learners are particularly well suited to succeed in online learning environments (Artino,

2008; Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2004; Garrison, 2003; Schraw, 2010).

In an online classroom, students are required to have self-discipline and be self-

51
directed learners (Sansone et al., 2011; Schraw, 2010). Compared to a traditional

classroom setting where teachers normally provide structure, online learners are expected

to be more autonomous, independent, and self-directed (Artino, 2008). According to the

2006 Sloan Consortium survey of academic leaders from 2,500 U.S. colleges and

universities, the number one barrier to the widespread adoption of online learning is that

“students need more discipline to succeed in online courses” (Allen & Seaman, 2007).

Artino (2008) reviewed research relating to learner characteristics in online

settings and the relationship among social cognitive views of self-regulation and student

success in online courses. Students who practice academic self-regulation and are able to

adapt their cognition, motivation, and behavior to improve learning tend to outperform

their less-adaptive counterparts (Artino, 2008). “Self-regulatory skills require that

students’ goals be realistic—challenging but attainable. With realistic goals, students can

monitor progress and decide on a different task approach if their present one is

ineffective” (Schunk, 1986, p. 81).

Artino (2008) encouraged online instructors to “consider and explicitly address

their learners’ academic motivation and self-regulation as they strive to provide engaging

and effective online instruction” (p. 37). Schraw (2011) called for future work to develop

an integrated measurement system that measures a student’s self-regulated learning in

computer based learning environments. It is clear that while self-regulation is an

important factor in online student success, there is still work that needs to be done to

create online learning environments that foster and measure student self-regulation and

its impact on motivation and success.

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Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions

“The control-value theory implies that students’ emotions can be positively

influenced by fostering their perceptions of competence and control over academic

activities and outcomes and by shaping their appraisals of the values of these activities

and outcomes” (Pekrun, 2006, p. 334). According to Pekrun (2006), important factors

influencing student control, values, and emotions include the following: (a) matching

task-demands to a student’s capabilities should increase a student’s sense of control and

positive academic values; (b) when parents, teachers, and peers communicate positive

verbal and behavioral feedback about the learning process, it promotes a learner’s

enthusiasm; (c) giving students opportunity for autonomous and cooperative learning

environments allows them to self-regulate their learning processes and foster a sense of

competence and positive emotions; (d) the individual expectations of teachers, parents,

and peers should not exceed a student’s capabilities; (e) social expectations of

achievement should be attainable; (f) feedback and consequences of achievement directly

determine students’ outcome emotions and influence long-term success or failure; (g) the

treatment of appraisal and emotions can successfully improve college students’

motivation and academic achievement and are helpful for changing emotions and

problem-solving skills; (h) educators can help students self-regulate their appraisals and

achievement emotions, and foster emotional development through the development of

regulatory skills (p. 334). Pekrun (2006) also asserted:

Emotions are of primary educational importance, for two reasons. First as

implied by the control-value theory, emotions can affect students’ interest,
engagement, achievement, and personality development, as well as the social
climate in classrooms and educational institutions. Second, as noted above,
emotions are central to psychological health and well-being, implying that they
53
 should be regarded as important educational outcomes in themselves, independent
of their functional relevance. (p. 333)

The Relationship between Emotions and Persistence in Online Courses

As the control-value theory posits, learning is an emotional process (Pekrun,

2006). Students feel a range of emotions including interest, enjoyment, frustration,

worry, pride, and boredom. Researchers and educators have studied the relationship

between personal emotions and a student’s ability to succeed educationally; however,

most of the research on this topic has focused on traditional face-to-face educational

settings (Artino, 2012; Jarvenoja & Jarvela, 2005). As online education has expanded,

researchers and educators have become interested in how emotions emerge and are

regulated, and how emotions relate to behavior, motivation, and achievement in online

classes (Artino, 2012). “The model most commonly applied in online research is a

social-cognitive model of self-regulated learning that includes personal factors, consisting

of motivational beliefs and achievement emotions, predicting personal behaviors related

to cognitive strategy use, and academic outcomes” (Marchand & Gutierrez, 2012, p.

151). The following is a summary of recent empirical articles published by international

scholars who have explored the impact of emotions in online learning environments from

different theoretical and methodological perspectives.

It is important to differentiate between feelings and emotions. Often, these two

terms are used interchangeably or as synonyms; yet, theorists have distinguished between

them.

Feelings (e.g., feeling of familiarity, feeling of satisfaction, feeling of confidence,

feeling of uncertainty, feeling of loneliness, etc.) are conceived as distinct from
emotions in that they have a hedonic quality but the action tendency is not urgent
as it happens with emotions. Furthermore, feelings are assumed to monitor the
54
 state of satisfaction of the organism with respect to concerns sometimes identified
in the feeling’s name, and they do so in a way that is accessible to reflection.
(Efklides &Volet, 2005, p. 377).

According to Efklides and Volet, emotions and feelings have an impact on the entire

learning process, including the stage that precedes learning, the actual learning and

engagement stage, and the completion stage in which the learner evaluates the outcomes.

Four important studies employed the Pekrun (2006) control-value theory to

explore the relationship among students’ self-efficacy and motivational beliefs, their

achievement emotions, their learning behaviors, and their overall academic performance.

Marchand and Gutierrez (2012) compared the role of emotion in the learning process

between students in online classes and students in traditional graduate classes.

Researchers found that achievement emotions of hope, frustration, and anxiety played an

important role in students’ use of behavior strategies. Tempelaar, Niculescu, Rienties,

Gijselaers, and Giesbers (2012) concluded that effort beliefs and students’ implicit

theories of intelligence may impact which achievement emotions students experience in

academic settings and that enjoyment and boredom contributed to student learning.

Artino and Jones (2012) also used the control-value theory to conduct a study examining

the link between achievement emotions and self-regulation in online settings and found

that feelings of frustration may promote metacognitive engagement in high-achieving

students who are highly confident in their academic abilities. Their findings

corresponded with Pekrun (2006) who wrote that “positive achievement emotions do not

always exert positive effects, and negative achievement emotions do not always produce

negative effects on academic learning and achievement” (p. 327). Noteborn, Carbonell,

Dalley-Hebert, and Gijselaers (2012) explored the relationship between task value and
55
achievement emotions and found that task value beliefs were related to enjoyment and

boredom but that these beliefs did not correlate with performance.

Sansone et al. (2012) conducted a study using the self-regulation of emotion

model to understand how students regulate their emotion and motivation in online

learning environments. The study compared online and on-campus students’ reported use

of strategies to enhance performance and to improve the studying experience.

Researchers found that “online learning may be particularly sensitive to self-regulatory

trade-offs between maintaining interest and performance” (Sansone et al., 2012, p. 1).

While on-campus students and online students did not differ in background or in the

degree to which they used motivational strategies to enhance their learning, online

students who reported greater Internet exploration and higher interest also earned lower

grades. Possible explanations for this trade-off include the following: students who

spend more time exploring related links and extraneous information may not have been

learning what they needed for the test, or they lacked the structure of an instructor and

classmates to help them stay on task.

Experience-defined motivational strategies may be more likely to be associated

with trade-offs in online contexts because there is typically little monitoring of
how students use their time, and a salient means to enhance interest (i.e.,
exploring via the Internet) can be used to a great degree without necessarily being
used effectively for learning. (Sansone et al., 2012, p. 147)

Other studies that explored the relationship between emotions and online learning

focused on a variety of contexts. One uses the control-value theory to conduct an in-

depth analysis of a set of emotions that arise during complex learning in more restricted

contexts and over shorter time spans (Lehma, D’Mello, & Graesser, 2012). Two

important qualitative studies focused on the emotional experiences of online learners and
56
online instructors (Borup, West, & Graham, 2012). Risquez and Sanchez-Garcia (2012)

studied the emotions of mentor-mentee relationships in online environments. Ultimately,

researchers suggest that the emotional experiences of face-to-face classroom students are

similar to those experienced by online learners and make suggestions for further research

on the topic (Daniels & Stupnisky, 2012).

Summary

Some researchers (Altbach et al., 2005; Deutsch & Schmertz, 2011; Furst-Bowe

& Dittmann, 2001; ITC, 2011; Kramarae, 2001; Muller, 2008; Peter & Horn, 2005

Gigliotti & Huff, 1995; Matus-Grossman, Gooden, & Associates, 2002; Rubenson &

Desjardins, 2009; Scott et al., 1998) write that while non-traditional age women comprise

the majority of college student populations both on campus and online, women who are

mothers face particular challenges in their pursuit of higher education for a variety of

reasons. Institutional retention efforts and a student’s individual characteristics

contribute to academic success and attainment (Dweck, 1986; Bandura & Cervone, 1983;

Dweck, 1986; Schunk, 1991; Artino, 2008; Sansone et al., 2012; Pekrun, 2006; Astin,

1984, 1985; Tinto, 1975, 1993, 1997; Tinto & Russo, 1994; Spady, 1970, 1971).

However, in order to better understand general problems of retention in higher education,

more research focused on specific populations such as mothers is both necessary and

important. The more diversified and nuanced qualitative studies on specific populations,

such as mothers in online degree programs, contribute significantly to the academic

literature pertaining to higher education attainment.

While some researchers (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Gilligan,

1993; Josselson, 1987, 1992; Sidel, 1990) have found that particular internal female
57
identity, motivation, and emotional characteristics play a part in a woman’s educational

success, more research is needed to understand the experiences of mothers who have

succeeded in attaining online bachelor’s degrees. At stake are the competitive future of

the United States in a global marketplace, the growth and future of institutions of higher

education, and the personal success of individual women. By deeply delving into the

lived experiences of mothers in online bachelor’s degree programs, this study meets a

needs gap in the literature thus far.

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 CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this study is to understand the lived experiences of mothers who have

graduated from online bachelor’s degree programs. The research questions that guided

this study are:

1. What is it like to be a college student mother pursuing an online degree

program?

2. What factors are essential to the success, retention, and degree completion of

student mothers?

This study and the questions it addressed are framed within the tradition of

qualitative, and more specifically, phenomenological research. What follows is an

account of this inquiry’s conceptual framework, the methods of data collection and

analysis that were employed, the criteria used for evaluation of qualitative research, the

ethical considerations that were taken into account, and the researcher’s role in this

phenomenological study.

Positioning the Study Within the Qualitative Research Paradigm

Qualitative research “takes many forms and is conducted in many settings”

(Bogdan & Biklen, 2007, p. 2). A study of this nature asks: “How, why, and what?”

This study and the questions it poses are framed from a qualitative research perspective

and approach. “Qualitative researchers are after meaning. The social meaning people

attribute to their experiences, circumstances, and situations, as well as the meanings

people embed into texts and other objects, are the focus of qualitative research” (Hesse-

Biber & Leavy, 2011, p. 4).

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 There is a record of substantial qualitative research studies in the field of higher

education (Ellis et al., 2008). An inquiry into the issues of motherhood, academic

success, persistence, and other relevant issues necessitated an approach that could address

these issues in detail and in depth by presenting individual and/or group holistic accounts

of human experience. In this regard, choosing a qualitative and specifically

phenomenological approach to the study of student mothers who persist towards their

higher education degree completion was indispensable.

Educational research is informed by specific philosophical and methodological

assumptions, or broadly speaking, paradigms. The ontological issues related to the nature

of reality, the epistemological assumptions about the nature of knowledge and its claims,

the value statements, and the methodological process and language of the research shape

the essential ingredients of any type of research (Creswell, 2007). This study was

conceived within the tradition of the qualitative or interpretive research paradigm; the

terms qualitative and interpretive are used interchangeably. This study was informed by

a social constructivist framework which focuses on the way in which humans experience

the reality of everyday life, the collective social reality of their society, and how they

communicate their realities through language (Dillon, 2010).

As a researcher, I am interested in women’s issues. I am a female; I am also a

mother who, at the time of this study, was an online student. I am passionate about

helping other mothers in online programs graduate from college and go on to make a

difference in the world. I am interested in helping those in higher education, who work

with student mothers, to develop effective programs and strategies conducive to the

retention and degree completion of student mothers in online programs.

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 Research Design: Phenomenological Tradition

Phenomenology is a long-standing tradition in educational research that can be

described as “the study of the shared meaning of experience of a phenomenon for several

individuals” (McCaslin & Scott, 2003, p. 449). Van Manen (1990) posited,

“phenomenology is the science of phenomena” (p. 184). A phenomenological researcher

gathers data from extensive interviews and reduces these data by “describing the shared

experiences of several informants to a central meaning, or ‘essence’ of the experience”

(McCaslin & Scott, 2003, p. 449). In other words, a phenomenological study is one that

“describes the common meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a

concept or phenomenon” (Creswell, 2007, p. 76). Van Manen (1990) strongly stated that

“lived experience is the starting point and end point of phenomenological research” (p.

36). It is important to note that while Husserl (1859–1938) was the first to articulate

phenomenology as a philosophy and other authorities have followed, there is no uniform

agreement on phenomenology as a methodology:

For example, Grant (2004), in legitimating her phenomenological method, refers

to Creswell (1998), May (1965), Kvale (1996), Husserl (1962), Sch tz (1967),
Polkinghorne (1989), Moustakas (1994), Giorgi (1985; in press), and Geertz
(1983). Yet, if one puts all of these thinkers side by side, one would not get a
harmonious integration. There are irreconcilable differences among them.
(Giorgi, 2006, p. 354)

Alfred Schutz (1899–1959), an Austrian-born student of Edmund Husserl,

founded the International Phenomenological Society in 1941 (Dillon, 2010, p. 287).

Schutz applied Husserl’s ideas to a construct of “the significance of everyday experiences

and how individuals construe and act in and on a particular social reality” (Dillon, p.

286). According to Schutz (1970), “The world of everyday life is the scene and also the

61
object of our actions and interactions” (p. 72).

Social phenomenologists emphasize the influence of an individual’s personal

experiences, daily rituals, and everyday life on a person’s interpretations of reality

(Dillon, 2010; Moustakas, 1994; Schutz, 1932, 1970; van Manen, 1990). For example,

two student mothers may be enrolled in the same online course, but each student brings

her own personal and educational history, ideas, and prior knowledge to the course. Each

mother would also have different interactions with the instructor, the course materials,

and other students. So while both students have similar characteristics and are interacting

with the same learning environment, their individual experiences, perceptions, and

outcomes are different realities.

Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology, intended for phenomenology to

be a philosophical method, but he also believed that “if there was going to be progress in

philosophical knowledge, then methodological procedures would have to be followed”

(Giorgi, 2006, p. 354). Throughout this study, I used the procedures that Giorgi insisted

should be maintained in a phenomenological method: phenomenological reduction,

bracketing, imaginative variation, generalization, and verification of findings. Giorgi

(2006) reiterated Husserl in stating that in order to employ the phenomenological

reduction, one should:

(1) adopt the phenomenological attitude, (2) encounter an instance of the

phenomenon that one is interested in studying and then use the process of free
imaginative variation in order to determine the essence of the phenomenon, and
(3) one then carefully describes the essence that was discovered. The above is the
articulation of Husserl’s philosophical method. If one applied the above method
directly, without modification, one would be doing philosophical analyses. (p.
355)

This process of conducting phenomenological research is embedded in the

62
interpretist paradigm and it entails the collection of data through inductive, qualitative

methods, reflexivity of the researcher, and a final holistic description of the key

phenomenon unfolding a variety of the participants’ experiences (Creswell, 2007; Hesse-

Biber & Leavy, 2011; Lester, 1999; McCaslin & Scott, 2003). Phenomenology is both a

philosophy and a methodology. As a philosophy, it is most closely allied with

existentialism. In this study, I drew from a social and psychological phenomenological

framework.

Phenomenology: Research Process and Bracketing

According to Creswell (2007) and van Manen (2011), Moustakas’ (1994)

phenomenological perspective focuses on describing the experiences of participants. The

philosophical foundation for Moustakas’ methodology is psychological phenomenology,

which he described as a viewpoint “in which everything is perceived freshly, as if for the

first time” (Moustakas, p. 34). In this study, I suspended my own experiences as a

mother and online student and focused instead on the experiences of the participants.

For the phenomenological researcher, it is argued that bracketing, a practice that

suspends one’s natural assumptions about the world, is executed so that “what is essential

in the phenomena of consciousness can be understood without prejudice” (LeVasseur,

2003, p. 5). Van Manen (1990) defined bracketing as “the act of suspending one’s

various beliefs in the reality of the natural world in order to study the essential structures

of the world” (p. 175). According to Moustakas (1994), epoche for the researcher is

employed “in order to launch the study as far as possible free of preconceptions, beliefs,

and knowledge of the phenomenon from prior experience and professional studies” (p.

22).
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 Husserl (1973) thought that accurate essential intuition required a kind of prior

mental purge of the untutored natural attitude that clutters the actual phenomena of lived

experience with inessential factual assumptions (p. 54). This purge or cleansing of the

mind to ready it for the perception of meaning was what Husserl called the epoche, a

method used to concentrate the attention on essences. As described previously, the

epoche consisted in “bracketing” lived experience by suspending assumptions about the

existence of things and shifting attention to the actual phenomena in their intentionality

and horizonality.

According to Stewart and Mickunas (1990), Husserl’s use of the three terms—

phenomenological reduction, epoche, and bracketing—are interchangeable and refer to

the “change in attitude necessary for philosophical inquiry” (p. 27). Phenomenology

deals with human experiences as highly subjective. Accordingly, this research was

incredibly subjective and personal to me. I am a mother who, at the time of this study,

was an online student. I have struggled with finding balance between my studies, work,

and family. I have found support networks outside myself and have summoned all of my

internal strength to persist when it felt like I wanted to quit. While my goal in this study

was to describe women’s experiences accurately and with an unprejudiced eye, I was

keenly aware of the challenge involved in accomplishing an absolute purge of my own

experiences. It is nearly impossible to completely remove the “Self” from one’s research

(LeVasseur, 2003). However, I maintained a “persistent curiosity” while conducting

interviews, analyzing data, and using the phenomenological reduction method

(LeVasseur, 2003, p. 418). LeVasseur (2003) posited that it is possible to have a fresh

outlook and experience if the researcher attempts to temporarily “transcend this

64
intentional structure or preunderstanding [by] suspending it briefly in a reflective move

that cultivates persistent curiosity” (p. 418).

According to Gorgi (2006), the phenomenological reduction is essential to a

phenomenological study and can be accomplished by the following:

Basically, to employ the phenomenological reduction means two things: (1) The
researcher has to bracket personal past knowledge and all other theoretical
knowledge, not based on direct intuition, regardless of its source, so that full
attention can be given to the instance of the phenomenon that is currently
appearing to his or her consciousness, and (2) the researcher withholds the
positing of the existence or reality of the object or state of affairs that he or she is
beholding. The researcher takes the object or event to be something that is
appearing or presenting itself to him or her but does not make the claim that the
object or event really exists in the way that it is appearing. It is seen to be a
phenomenon. (p. 355)

Data Collection Procedures

Selection of Participants

Qualitative research is concerned with an in-depth understanding of a small

sampling of participants (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011; Denzin & Lincoln, 2011).

Participants in this study were selected according to several major characteristics; they

were women, mothers, and recent graduates of online bachelor’s degree programs.

I interviewed 12 women from seven different higher education institutions within

the Prairie Upper Midwest geographic region of the country. In addition, at the time of

their coursework and graduation, the participants varied in age and also in the number

and ages of their children. I was conscious that there might be differences in the

experiences of students with small children versus those with older children. The

literature is clear that women usually have the majority of parenting responsibilities

regardless of marital status, so this study included participants who were married and

65
single. The selected participants varied in their marital status, degree programs,

socioeconomic status, religion, and ethnic background. All of the participants had one or

more children aged 18 and younger at the time of their coursework and degree

completion. The common factors among all participants were their completion or near

completion of a fully online bachelor’s degree program and the fact that they were

mothers.

Purposive, snowball, and convenience sampling techniques (Hesse-Biber &

Leavy, 2011) were used to identify subjects matching the above stated criteria. To select

a purposive sample, I contacted distance education directors at a variety of institutions in

the Prairie Upper Midwest geographical area and asked for nominations of potential

participants who matched the criteria.

Additionally, I was prepared to employ snowballing, which is asking the

participants to nominate other women they believe fit the study’s criteria and may be

interested in participating, so that their referrals could enable the network of participants

to grow if need be. Ultimately, selection of the purposive sample of participants did not

require snowballing. I also utilized friends, colleagues, and family to help identify and

contact women who matched my research criteria.

Prior to the interview, I provided each participant with a demographic survey, an

outline of the interview procedures, a confirmation of meeting location and time, and a

copy of the consent form for them to review and sign. As much as possible, I alleviated

anxiety or uncertainty about the research process. I created a comfortable, collaborative,

and trusting environment where the participants felt free to share their experiences

without hesitation or limitation.

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Data Sources

Demographic survey. The demographic survey (see Appendix A) was used to

gather data related to the participants’ backgrounds. Information regarding the

participants’ educational attainment, marital status, and socioeconomic and ethnic

background was kept in the strictest confidence. The demographic survey was used to

add further clarity to each woman’s unique experience as a mother and online student.

Interviews. Extensive semi-structured or unstructured interviews serve as a

method for gathering major data for analysis in phenomenological studies (Creswell,

2007; Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011; Lester, 1999). In order to

understand the lived experiences of the participants in this study, I conducted in-depth

semi-structured interviews which allowed for “a particular kind of conversation between

the researcher and the interviewee that requires active asking and listening” (Hesse-Biber

& Leavy, 2011, p. 94). The process of interviewing results in a “meaning-making

endeavor embarked on as a partnership between the interviewer and his or her

respondent” (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011, p. 94). Semi-structured interviews “rely on a

certain set of questions and try to guide the conversation to remain, more loosely, on

those questions. However, semi-structured interviews also allow individual respondents

some latitude and freedom to talk about what is of interest or importance to them”

(Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011, p. 102).

Prior to conducting the interviews, I established rapport with the participants of

the study via e-mail correspondence or informal personal conversations (Hesse-Biber &

Leavy, 2011). For the purposes of this study, the interviews were conducted face-to-face.

Each interview lasted approximately one and a half to two hours and was recorded with
67
the consent of the participant. The interview guide (see Appendix B) contained a series

of questions designed for the purposes of the study. However, typical phenomenological

interviews represent a free floating conversation between the researcher and the

participants allowing for the freedom and openness necessary to acquire as much relevant

study information as possible. This format allowed additional questions to spring from

the conversation and the participants could then continue or expound on a focused topic.

The interviews were designed and conducted to encourage “thick description” with an

infinite range of possible answers (Creswell, 2011, p. 95). Creswell’s (2011) concept of

“thick description” means that the interviews incite large amounts of transcripted data

containing deep information full of description, concepts, opinions, experiences, feelings,

and thoughts (p. 95).

All interviews were transcribed verbatim by a professional transcriptionist. Once

transcriptions were complete, they were sent to each participant for verification of

accuracy. This process is called member checking. Because of the in-depth nature of the

interviews, transcripts ranged between 8 and 12 pages long.

Documents and Artifacts. In addition to the interview data, participants were

asked to provide documents and/or artifacts that were relevant to the purposes of this

study. The participants were asked to choose artifacts that they felt represented and

illustrated their experiences as mothers in online bachelor’s degrees. These were

photographs, diaries, journals, letters, speeches, songs, poems, artwork, or papers.

Participants were free to choose the number and types of documents and artifacts they

provided. These additional data were used to gather more information about the women’s

experiences as mothers and online students. Documents and artifacts are considered
68
important supplementary data for qualitative research (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007).

Triangulating multiple data sources contributes to the credibility of the findings in

qualitative research and adds to its rigor (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Creswell, 2007; Hesse-

Biber & Leavy, 2011).

Field Notes. As recommended by Creswell (2008) and Bogdan & Biklen (2003),

I took field notes. Immediately following the interviews, I took time to journal my

observations of the participant’s demeanor, attitude, tone of voice, and body language. I

also used this journal to pose questions to myself, jot down wonderings, and make notes

to explore certain parts of the interview for especially insightful quotes. The journal

served as a place where I could capture information that might not be transmitted through

a written transcript and encouraged my reflexivity throughout the process.

Data Analysis

Data analysis in a qualitative study is often characterized as “interrelated,”

“simultaneous,” and “spiral” (Creswell, 2007, p. 182). It is spiral because “the researcher

engages in the process of moving in analytic circles rather than using a fixed linear

approach” (Creswell, 2007, p. 182). As previously discussed, the data analysis in this

study followed the major steps of the phenomenological process. Typical procedures for

qualitative data analysis include coding, themes identification, and memoing (Creswell,

2007). Throughout the research process, I kept a journal of self-reflective notes. These

notes included methodological memos—“short phrases, ideas, or key concepts”

(Creswell, 2007, p. 183).

Coding is typically referred to as “the analysis strategy many qualitative

researchers employ to help them locate key themes, patterns, ideas and concepts that may
69
exist within their data” (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011, p. 309). The transcripts of the

interviews were coded manually. During this initial process of coding, I highlighted

significant statements (horizonalization) and then grouped these statements into themes

or clusters of meaning units. “Themes in qualitative research (also called categories) are

broad units of information that consist of several codes aggregated to form a common

idea” (Creswell, 2007, p. 186). A further stage of data analysis and interpretation

consisted of the “organization of themes into larger units of abstraction to make sense of

the data” (Creswell, 2007, p. 187).

Finally, to represent the analyzed data, I created a thick and rich narrative

accompanied by visuals to convey the structures of the participants’ experiences of the

phenomena under investigation. The data representation, in other words, included

“significant statements that describe how the participants experience the phenomenon”

(Creswell, 2007, p. 193).

Criteria for Evaluation

One of the major components of the evaluation criteria for qualitative research is

“trustworthiness” which “takes the place of truth” (Hesse-Biber, 2011, p. 105). However,

it is important to acknowledge that there are multiple opinions on the subject of

trustworthiness, or validation of qualitative research. In addition, there are various and

contradictory definitions, terminologies, and recommended procedures. For instance,

Creswell (2007) presented eight different foundational studies that use various

perspectives and terms for trustworthiness of findings (p. 244). LeCompte and Goetz

(1982) (as cited in Creswell, 2007) took an approach that is similar to that of quantitative

research, while Wolcott (1990) (as cited in Creswell, 2007) dismissed validation because
70
it “distracts from his work of understanding” (p. 247). The practice of qualitative

research is diverse, discordant, and evolving.

There is “no specific litmus test we can administer that will apply a stamp of

approval on any given qualitative research project” (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011, p. 48).

According to Bentley (2000), “being trustworthy as a qualitative researcher implies that

the research was carried our fairly—that the results represent as closely as possible the

experiences of those studied. Simply put, trustworthiness means that the research process

is honest and believable” (p. 53). Qualitative researchers “typically use more than one

procedure” to make their studies credible (Creswell & Clark, 2011, p. 211). The term

“triangulation,” according to Bogdan and Biklen (2007) is defined as “the use of multi-

data sources or theoretical perspectives in a study” (p. 275). To ensure the credibility of

this study, I was guided by the assumptions of the above researchers and relied on various

strategies such as using multiple data sources, triangulation, rich and thick description of

the findings, member checking, and trustworthiness.

Ethical Considerations and Researcher’s Self

“The qualitative research in a good study is ethical” (Creswell, 2007, p. 55). To

be sensitive to participants, stakeholders, and publishers of research, I have been mindful

that ethical considerations have been addressed throughout all stages of this study,

including the design, data collection, data analysis, data reporting, and writing. While

conducting this study, I was guided primarily by the Benedictine University Institutional

Review Board (IRB) standards. Prior to or on the day of each scheduled interview, a

consent form (see Appendix C) was given to the participant to read and sign.

Every attempt has been made to protect the anonymity of the participants and to
71
keep the collected data confidential. Each participant and names provided throughout the

study and during the interview process were given pseudonyms. Each interview was

given a secure code known only to the principal researcher. The records of audio

interviews will remain stored in a locked electronic file for at least seven years and

destroyed afterwards if no longer needed. All computer files used for this study will be

kept on a secure server.

A considerable part of the ethics of conducting qualitative research is the

recognition of its subjective character and potential bias (Creswell, 2007, 2009).

However, qualitative researchers do not consider this as a “limitation,” but rather a space

where the researcher has a chance to negotiate the boundaries of a specific type of

interpretive research (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011). This phenomenological study was

limited in its scope and number of participants from the onset. In fact, the number of

participants in qualitative research does not play a decisive role, and the 12 participants

involved in this study is considered to be an appropriate number for a phenomenological

research (Creswell, 2007).

The researcher is the primary instrument in a qualitative study and his or her voice

is an integral element of the research process (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011). To ensure

the credibility of qualitative inquiry, the researcher negotiates his or her potential bias

through the concept of reflexivity. According to Mann and Kelly (1997) (as cited in

Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011), “Reflexivity is the awareness that all knowledge is affected

by the social conditions under which it is produced; it is grounded in both the social

location and the social biography of the observer and the observed” (p. 38). I was keenly

aware of my potential bias due to the fact that, as an online student and mother, I shared
72
many of the experiences of the participants in this study. Therefore, throughout the

process of data collection and analyses, I kept a journal of self-reflective notes in which I

addressed my “background [and] how it informs [my] interpretation of the information in

a study, and what [I] have to gain from the study” (Creswell, 2012 p. 47). As a

phenomenological researcher, I remained open to the experiences of the participants and

did not allow my personal experiences to stand in the way of providing an accurate and

unbiased presentation of the findings through reflexivity and member checking

(Creswell, 2012).

Moreover, identifying with research participants can be highly beneficial for

qualitative research (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011). I was an online faculty member at

several types of institutions and a dean at a college that boasted 80% of its seats online. I

have had many experiences working with student mothers who struggle to find balance

between their schoolwork, job, family, and mothering responsibilities. I have seen

women overcome enormous obstacles and I have also watched others fail or quit. One of

the reasons I conducted this study was rooted in my curiosity about the experiences other

mothers have had as online students. I was also interested in discovering the secrets to

success for this unique group of students. My research role in this study was two-fold.

Personally, I was interested in recording the experiences of women who have had a

similar experience as my own. Professionally, I was interested in helping higher

education professionals retain and graduate more student mothers. Although my

experiences were similar to those of the study participants, I approached each interview

with open curiosity, used reflexivity, and analyzed the data according to the established

ethical standards for conducting qualitative research.

73
 Conclusions

This chapter details epistemological and methodological assumptions that ground

this inquiry within the phenomenological tradition and methods of data collection and

analysis. The research questions, rationale, and methodologies were designed to capture

the essence of the participants’ experiences and generate deep knowledge on the topics of

persistence, retention, and bachelor’s degree completion for this important subpopulation

of student mothers in online programs.

As a student mother in an online doctoral degree program who has much in

common with the participants of this study, I have negotiated my researcher’s self

throughout the study in order to present its results in an ethically appropriate and credible

way, thus minimizing my potential biases and preconceived ideas by a means of

phenomenological bracketing expressed in extensive and reflexive journal entries and

memos. I captured the strength, humanity, and strategies of the study participants who

also overcame great challenges to academic success so that other student mothers could

also achieve their goals.

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 CHAPTER FOUR

LIFE JOURNEYS OF ONLINE STUDENT MOTHERS

A Life in Transition

The seasons are in transition. Summer is turning to fall right before us here in North
Dakota. Change of season—one big reason people choose to live here.
A stretch of dry days a few weeks ago helped to turn the cottonwood leaves
yellow. It seemed to happen overnight. The willows, the aspen and other leafy-tree
cousins are slowly blinking to a winter sleep like a child overdue for bed. The pines are
losing softness in turn to be prickly; and therefore, protected in dormancy.
Late August rain storms came and so the grasses remain green. It's been green all
summer. A rarity for us on the central plains.
They say the ground is too wet for full-time harvesting. But, oats have been rolled
and tied nearby. The flax has been sprayed to stop its growth and be readied for cutting.
Alfalfa keeps falling to the bundle.
The corn fields are becoming edged in their own dried stalks. Wheat is further
ripening. Mature sunflower heads bow heavily to the earth under the pull of their own
weight. They are stiffening with each passing day and will remain in this death pose until
the farmer comes reaping. Life goes on and life renews. I look ahead to the renewal and
try not to dwell in the funk.
It's a young September, yet. The sun disappears in the evening around nine. Used
to be ten. The dark end to an old summer day brings out the still lively mosquitoes, now
in desperation for their last bites. The new batches of crickets encroach nearer to the
house. The cat brings in the nesting mice, almost daily now. They sense change, too, in
their primitiveness.
The pissants were swarming a few days ago. That's what grandma called them
anyway. I had never seen a swarm of pissants before. Well, not in the entomology sense.
Grandpa said the seagulls love them. No sooner than naught, a flock of gulls were
spotted circling above. Teeming, they came after the winged ants high up in the sky.
Grandpa's comment was proven true right before our eyes.
Truthfully, I am looking forward to cooler days ahead. To the earthy changes in
store. Full of melancholy, not mournfulness, this loss of summer conjures. I'm swimming
in it. Not welcoming the drawn out months of cold winter in wait. Stretches of sunless
days to muddle through. Unfriendly lines of gray skies from dawn to dusk. Howling winds
of seemingly endless blizzards.
Whether we are aware of it or not, it is with purpose. Plains people are forced to
notice the extremes in order to see the subtle nuances. To make us cherish our prairie
summer even more.
Life advances unwarily, regardless of our wishes. A spinning carousel of time
with riders dizzy from the speed, staring blankly outward, longing for pause. There is no
pause in this life unrelenting.
Lo! It has begun a chilly rain (Price, 2010).

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 The mothers who participated in this study came from the prairie plains of the

upper Midwest. Demographically, the women came from diverse backgrounds that

reflected the rich culture of this region. The ethnic background of the participants closely

matched that of the general population: two women were Native American and 10 where

Caucasian. According to Census 2011 data, 6.4% of this region’s population is Native

American. In addition to ethnic variation, the ages of participants ranged from 29 to 55

years old, spanning three generations. The women described their experiences parenting

children from infant to young adult age. Socioeconomically, the participants in this study

described themselves on varying scales from lower to middle class at the time they began

their degrees. Two said they were low income, one said she was lower-middle income,

and nine described themselves as middle class. The twelve participants in this study

attended seven different postsecondary institutions: five attended public institutions, one

attended a private religious institution, one attended a tribal college, and four attended

for-profit institutions. Other demographic factors such as marital status varied across the

group: six participants were married, two were remarried, two were divorced, one was

single, and one was separated. While relationships with men emerged in the

conversations, the central focus of the conversation was on the participants’ roles as

mothers and online bachelor’s degree students.

As a region, the plains prairies are harsh and demanding. The summers are hot

and dry; the winters long, cold, and dark. Those who choose to live in this environment

face extreme environmental conditions that require physical, emotional, and mental

strength for survival. Even spring brings April blizzards with 19 inches of snow and

floods which destroy entire towns. While modern life is certainly less dangerous than it
76
was a hundred years ago, there is still a spirit of independence and survival that resonates

among those who persist through adversity. The voices of the mothers who participated

in this study echo the pertinacious attitude of the prairie women who came before them.

To add color to the unique experiences of the individual women in this study, I’ve

selected a poem by Me’tis Native Canadian author, David Bouchard. Bouchard’s book,

If You’re Not from the Prairie, was written from the perspective of a North American

child living on the prairies. Bouchard described the extreme climate conditions and the

effect it has on the people who live there. The text of Bouchard’s (1998) poem reflects

the stubborn optimism and unwavering determination of the women in this study.

Table 1 provides a demographic summary of the participants who contributed the

qualitative data for this study. Table 1 shows that in addition to age, number and ages of

their children, marital and socioeconomic status, academic degrees, ethnic/racial

backgrounds, and type of graduation institutions, information regarding the source of

funding for the study participants’ educational pursuits has also been provided. The

profiles of the twelve participants are presented in alphabetical order according to the

pseudonyms assigned to them. Table 1 is meant to serve as a guide, visual representation,

and reference point for the rich diversity found within the research participant data and

profiles below.

Table 1

Participant Demographic Information

Name Age Ages of Marital Socioeconomic Degree(s) Ethnic/ Graduation College

children Status Status Racial Institution Funding
Background Type

Angela 40 5, 2 Re- Middle BA Accounting Native For-Profit Loans

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 married MA Accounting American-
Standing
Rock Lakota
Beth 36 Infant, 2 Married Low BS Caucasian Public Loans/
Communications Employer
Certificate in
Career
Development
Facilitating
Cammie 31 11, 7 Divorced Middle BA Business Caucasian Public Loans/
Administration Employer
Dawn 51 23, 18, Re- Middle BA Art Caucasian Public Loans/out
12 married Education of pocket
Ellen 35 19, 8, Married Middle BS Business Caucasian Public Employer
7, 2
Jenna 36 15 Single Middle BA University Caucasian Public Employer
Studies
Leah 29 4, 11 Married Middle AS Business Caucasian For-Profit Loans
Administration
BS Business
Administration
MBA Marketing
Mary 55 4, 19, Married Middle BS Business Native Tribal Grants/
21, 23 Administration American- Loans
Chippewa
Nina 34 3, 15, Separated Low BS Business Caucasian For-profit Grants/
17 Management Loans
Sara 41 7, 10, Married Lower middle BS Management Caucasian Catholic Loans
15 MBA/MS
Management
Sherrie 39 15, 18, Married Middle BS Business Caucasian For-profit Loans
21, 23 Administration
Summer 38 13, 15 Divorced Middle BS Human Caucasian Public Loans
Resources

Angela

So you're not from the prairie,

And yet you know snow?
You think you know snow?

Blizzards bring danger, as legends have told,

In deep drifts we roughhouse, ignoring the cold.
At times we look out at great seas of white,
So bright is the sun that we squeeze our eyes tight.

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know snow. (Bouchard, 1998, p. 16)

Angela is a confident 40-year-old Standing Rock Lakota woman. She lives on a

ranch located just two miles from the reservation border with her two young children,
78
ages 5 and 2, and her bull-rider husband. With long dark hair, dark brown eyes, and a big

voice, she is a striking presence. Angela worked on the reservation for ten years before

making the decision to go back to college. Angela began her online bachelor’s degree at

a large for-profit institution when she was eight months pregnant with her first child. She

chose an online degree partly because of her secluded geographical location. She felt it

was impossible for her to work and drive an hour each way to class. Winters on the

prairie are harsh and Angela knew she would be better off studying from home.

Angela says that once she decided to go back to school, there was no stopping

her. “Well, I was pregnant the month I started it. I started in June or July of ’07 and I

had him in August.” Angela took six weeks of maternity leave, but she did not take any

break from college. She was determined to get her degree no matter what it took. At the

time of the interview, Angela had completed a master’s degree.

While Angela says that her children were currently her biggest priority, that

wasn’t always the case. “I don’t think I started thinking about being a mom until I was

probably 30 or 31. And I don’t think I could ever be a stay-at-home mom.” Angela is

happy in her job as a manager. She is driven and effective in her job leading a team of

accountants. She explains that, although she has fun at work, her employees know they

had better work hard and smart. Angela loves what she does, and sees herself advancing

in the future once her children are older. As of the time of the interview, Angela was

happy as a middle manager and found satisfaction in being able to provide for herself and

her family.

Angela was a successful student and professional, but life was not always easy for

her. Angela did not meet her biological father until she was 18. Her mother and
79
maternal grandparents raised her. “My grandma came over every morning and braided

my hair before I went to school. My grandma and grandpa really loved me.” She was

married by the age of 19 and divorced by 20 because she felt like her first husband

Just married so that his family had another farm hand; his mother was really mean
to me. One day, I just packed my bags and left their farm. I hid at a friend’s
house so that they couldn’t find me.

She married and divorced again in her twenties. Angela is now married to her

third husband. “I was married twice before, but I didn’t know who I was or what I

wanted in life and that’s probably why those relationships didn’t work out. Basically, I

was just living.” Her husband, at the time of this study, was a cowboy and rancher who

raised bulls. He does no housework and participates marginally in childrearing. Even

though her husband is home all day long, Angela takes both of her small children

(daughter, age 1 and son, age 5) with her to town, which is 40 miles from home, to attend

daycare while she works. Angela also has evening sports activities; she takes her son to

tae kwondo class and she plays in softball and volleyball leagues. Angela and the

children sometimes spend the night at her mother’s house in town instead of driving back

to the ranch for the night.

Angela said the biggest challenge to degree completion was lack of sleep. She

took good care of her home and children, so she often did not start her class work until

late in the evening when everyone else was asleep. In order to keep up with her classes,

Angela had to be extremely organized. She is a self-proclaimed obsessive compulsive

and keeps a strict schedule for her life. However, she scheduled only a few hours each

night for sleep during the time she was in college.

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 Angela did not utilize any services from her online institution; however, she did

occasionally enjoy the university’s student SharePoint site where online students could

go to communicate, much like social networking. Angela found her instructors to be

responsive enough to meet her needs so, when she had questions, she turned to them for

support. She says she was happy with the overall experience of her institution and feels

she learned what she needed to for her occupation.

When asked about a support network, Angela mentioned that her mother and

husband provided some encouragement, but she feels she was the reason for her success.

She believed that she was determined and stubborn and that when it came down to it, she

was responsible for her own achievement. Angela declared:

I really believe it was all on me. I mean, of course I had encouragement from my
mom, but I’m still the one that had to do the work, so I’m the one that had to put
into my head that you need to plug forward and keep doing this and get it done.
It’s ridiculous. You can’t quit. Don’t give up. So, I was constantly telling myself
that. . . . There [were] times I wanted to give up. But I didn’t. I mean, I’m the
one that had to tell myself not to give up. I’m going to get it done.

Beth

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know our trees,
You can't know our trees.

The trees that we know have taken so long,

To live through our seasons, to grow tall and strong.
They're loved and they're treasured, we watched as they grew,
We knew they were special—the prairie has few.

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know our trees. (Bouchard, 1998, p.18)

Beth is a 36-year-old, married mother of two girls. She earned her Bachelor of

Science degree in communications and a graduate certificate in career development

81
facilitating online at a public university. At the time she started her degree, Beth

considered her family to be low income. Beth began her online program when she was

about 30 years old and her first daughter was two years old. Beth’s second daughter was

born while she was in college. Her bachelor’s degree took about six years to complete.

Beth worked part time and full time while she was a part-time student.

Beth’s dreams of being a writer, traveling the world, and living abroad never

came true. At the encouragement of her parents, Beth went away to college right out of

high school and earned a diploma in medical assisting. However, after her freshman year

at age 19, Beth married her high-school sweetheart who was a farmer, and moved out to

his farm. The certificate in she had earned in medical assisting was useless to her. She

realized, “There wasn’t really a job in my area because I married a farmer and there

wasn’t the chance of moving anywhere else for a job.” Beth had never wanted to have

children and she found the role of motherhood to be frightening and challenging. Beth

found herself struggling to reconcile the life she had imagined with the life she had

created and she longed for something more.

When Beth discovered that her husband was unable to pay their bills with the

money he earned farming, she knew she would have to find a job. Even with Beth’s

work cleaning houses and doing medical transcription, the family had to be on public

assistance. At a small public college in the nearest town, Beth posted flyers advertising

freelance resume writing. A few days later, she received a call and was offered a job as

the school’s career services advisor. Beth was hired without the degree needed for the

job and she drove long distances to and from work. Her employer was also very

encouraging of her to finish the program that would qualify her for her new position.
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 With a tuition waiver and Pell grants, Beth took a few classes at the college, but

found it very difficult because she wanted to spend time with her children instead of

attending night classes. After a few years taking random college courses, she had one

instructor who encouraged her to try online education. Beth chose an online program

with a public university because she wanted to earn her bachelor’s degree for her children

and to keep the job she had already acquired. In the end, finishing her degree gave her a

real sense of accomplishment.

Although she never hoped to be a mother, Beth now says that her children are the

most important thing in her life. Beth hopes she is a good role model for her daughters

and worries not only for their basic needs but about their emotional health as well.

“What am I going to teach them in the way that I’m living, that will have more of an

impact than the everyday stuff?” She wants them to see her living an important and

fulfilling life. She wants them to be self-confident and to be happy with themselves just

the way they are.

In pursuing her online degree, Beth’s age and husband also had an impact. She

realized while working on group projects that she couldn’t quite relate to everything the

younger students talked about. She also found they were not as serious about their

schooling as she was and that her everyday problems were unlike theirs. Although

Beth’s husband was initially supportive, he felt that he should be the sole support for the

family and that Beth should take care of all the home and childcare responsibilities. If

laundry wasn’t done or she was choosing homework after the kids were in bed instead

spending time with him, he complained.

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 Beth’s children definitely made earning her degree more difficult. While working

and taking online courses, Beth’s children were in baby and toddler stages.

I was sleep deprived. And, you just can’t go sit down on your computer and
expect to work uninterrupted on something. There’s always going to be someone
who wants something, who wants your attention. But, at the same time, I think it
gave me even more determination—that now I have these little people to take care
of and it’s even more important now that if something should ever happen, I can
take care of them.”

Beth didn’t feel that she was able to achieve balance while going to college,

working, and being a mother. Beth said,

It’s pretty much survival, I think. You know, homework has to get done. There
were some days where it was easier to get some of it done while I was at work.
Whether it was staying a little late to finish up so it didn’t seem to impact people
at home as much. But then, when there was a bigger project or I had to take some
of Saturday, then it was harder. That meant if the kids were acting up or sick or
whatever the thing, then they got the cranky side of mom because she had this
thing that she had to get done and they know this is important to her.

Beth tried to do as much homework as she possibly could at work. She also snuck in

homework when her kids napped and, as they got older, she stayed up late after the kids

were in bed.

For Beth, the biggest challenges of enrolling and completing her degree were

mainly meeting the usual weekly school deadlines and completing projects while also

taking care of her family and job. She got used to taking care of a myriad of problems all

in one day. After graduating, Beth finally realized how much free time she has.

I still think I should get lots done, no matter what and I think the reason is because
there are days when I rock the world and I get so much done and I go to bed
thinking oh my gosh! Every day should be like that! And, there’s just the
average, normal day where you get a few things done, but it’s just a day and then
I go to bed thinking it was a waste.

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 Beth thinks that being in a live classroom is easier. She prefers listening and

interacting with someone while she is learning, especially if she likes her instructor.

Beth’s opinion is that online learning takes more dedication and determination and that it

is more isolating. However, she said, “Having to do my classes on my own and use my

own self-motivation and scheduling time probably made me the student that I am now.”

Beth attributed her personal strengths of determination and stubbornness as helping her

overcome the barriers she faced on her journey to degree completion. “Being a fairly

good student, in general, is fine; but if I didn’t have the drive to want to do it, it wouldn’t

matter how good I was at school if I just didn’t want to go.”

Cammie

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know me.
You just can't know ME.

You see,
My hair's mostly wind,
My eyes filled with grit,
My skin's red or brown,
My lips chapped and split (Bouchard, 1998, p. 23)

Cammie is a 31-year-old mother of two. At the time of interview, her oldest

daughter was 11 and her son was 7. She is divorced. Prior to starting her schooling,

Cammie considered her status to be very low income. Her oldest daughter’s dad had left

Cammie before the baby was born. He told her that he just wasn’t ready to be a father.

She found herself a young single mother with no way to support herself. Cammie

received government assistance to support herself and her daughter until she could

become self-sufficient.

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 Cammie decided to go to college because she wanted a better financial life for

herself. Since high school, she knew she was going to go to college. “I wanted a better

life for my children, where I could take them places and I wanted to also show my kids

that you could go back to school.”

Another motivational factor for attending college involved her mother. Cammie’s

mother did not graduate from high school because she became pregnant with Cammie

when she was very young. There were five children in Cammie’s family. They grew up

in a small Midwestern town. Her mother’s life revolved around raising and caring for

children and family. Cammie recalled her mother reading books in the evenings. She

stated that her dad and many of the kids tried to encourage her mother to go back and

finish school but that it was an embarrassing topic for her mother. Even with no diploma,

Cammie considered her mother to be “amazing” and “one of the smartest women I

know.”

Cammie grew up watching her mother struggle because there were limited

options for women in a small town and Cammie was determined to give herself every

opportunity in order to have a better life than her mother had. She states that the women

in her small town were very dependent on their husbands and she wanted to be sure she

could take care of herself without a man. “I can shovel my own snow,” she said. College

provided the opportunity for Cammie to become self-sufficient.

With some college completed, Cammie was able to find a full-time job as a

secretary at a state agency. She saved enough money to buy her own house and get off of

public assistance. Her employer paid for part of her continuing education and so that was

another reason she kept taking classes toward her bachelor’s degree and then later her
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master’s degree. She also met the man who would become her husband. They married

and then her son was born.

To finish her bachelor’s degree in business administration, Cammie opted for

online courses at a public university because of the flexibility it provided her. She had a

new marriage, a job, a toddler, and a new baby at home. She said, “I felt like a

supermom. I could be cooking something, be burping the baby, and then typing

something.” She also woke early in the morning to do her schoolwork. Her husband was

also working toward his master’s degree and he studied in the evening. Both Cammie

and her husband scheduled their schooling around the children.

Being a mom influenced Cammie’s choice of degree.

No matter what, jobs can come and go; but my children and my family were
always going to be there and so I needed to work around their schedule and
wanted to be part of them growing up and being in their lives and so I think that is
kind of one of the reasons why I chose the careers that I wanted.

For example, Cammie was able to use her speech or communication coursework as a way

to teach her children basic skills. It gave her a different perspective in raising her

children.

Cammie describes herself as a perfectionist. This has led to some personal

challenges to completing her degree online. In high school Cammie was always a 4.0

student and demanded that of herself. But with her family and kids being her main

priority, she realized she would not be able to give 100% to everything. “You just feel

like you’re getting pulled in a million different directions and you’re just trying to keep

our head afloat some days, and then other days you feel really good.” She also added,

“Everyone was proud of me so it was a great motivation.”

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 Online courses provided great convenience but this option also came with a

higher price tag. She considered this higher cost to be the biggest downside of online

compared to traditional classes; however, Cammie felt that the flexibility made up for it.

Cammie mentioned other positive features of her online courses that were helpful to her.

Cammie preferes the video, visual components and interaction of classes over reading

text. She states that she liked being able to walk around while listening to a lecture and

could always rewind and go back later to a certain point or topic. She handled her

assignments as they came and did a little bit here and there.

Cammie tried to keep her weekends free from homework so she could spend time

with her family and, for that reason, she worked on assignments every weekday. Her

family was still the first priority for her. Time with her family “reenergized” her and

gave her a reason to keep up with her studies.

Cammie’s motivation and focus really drove her in every aspect of her life, along

with her impatience. “I know what I want and I go for it.” This made her work and goal

hard to achieve, but she knew she couldn’t push herself so much that it would negatively

affect her children. Her bachelor’s degree took about nine years to complete.

Unfortunately, it was at the end of earning her bachelor’s degree that Cammie’s marriage

fell apart. She divorced her husband while in the first semester of her master’s degree

coursework. She did not let the divorce deter her and she was still determined to

continue her education.

Cammie’s advice to college faculty and administrators is to provide more online

classes and flexibility for those classes. She thinks more students are becoming non-

traditional and colleges need to keep pace with them. College instructors also need to
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make themselves more available. In her experience, Cammie had to wait until the next

day to have some of her questions answered and by then it was too late to really make a

difference. Her mind was already on to the next thing. However, she did state, “Some

instructors were amazing.” They understood that her time was important and they would

respond quickly.

Dawn

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know the sky,
You can't know the sky.

The bold prairie sky is clear, bright and blue,

Though sometimes cloud messages give us a clue.
Monstrous grey mushrooms can hint of a storm,
Or painted pink feathers say good bye to the warm.

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know the sky. (Bouchard, 1998, p. 10)

Dawn is a 51-year-old mother, wife, and teacher. She has three boys aged 23, 18,

and 12. A determined, “what you see is what you get” type of person, Dawn started her

new path of learning at the age of 43. Dawn had already earned her Associate in Arts

degree and was working in the medical field when her employer offered to send her back

to school to relearn and retrain for a different position within the same hospital. While

deciding about the possible job change and the impact of returning to school, her husband

asked the question, “What is your passion?” She replied that it had always been art and

teaching. Because of his question, Dawn decided that she would return to school, but it

would be for a completely different reason—to pursue her love of art and teaching.

Dawn began by talking with administrators within the educational system about

what was in demand. They pushed her to explore the field of technical education. She
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already had an interest in art so the hands-on, creative, and designing side of this program

appealed to her. Her schooling would consist of an accelerated teacher program. These

administrators said if she got through the program, they would hire her. Dawn decided to

attend a public university in another town and enroll in the online program that was

offered. This was about seven years prior to this study and twenty years after she had

earned her Associate in Arts degree. Going into this with almost no computer

experience, Dawn floundered at the beginning. She had no experience with online

learning, and the institution provided no tutorial by which to learn the platform. Dawn

asked a neighbor friend for help in understanding how to do online coursework. The

friend was patient and supportive and spent hours helping Dawn get accustomed to the

technology. Dawn’s husband immediately brought home a new laptop and equipped

their home office with wireless Internet. The new computer helped her tremendously.

Some of the challenges Dawn faced with her online courses included her lack of

knowledge regarding computers and her overall time management for getting her class

work done. She allotted time every day to work on her courses. She started assignments

as soon as they were given and stayed on top of her school workload. She had a few

classes she took on campus and did not enjoy them as much as her online classes. Of her

classmates, she said, “They wanted to just do a little bit, all they need to get through it.”

She wanted to learn, was passionate about it, and knew how important it was. Some of

the in-class teaching was redundant and when the teacher came to class unprepared, it

frustrated her because she knew her value. Her time was valuable and her learning was

valuable. She expected the best, especially because of the monetary cost associated with

college.
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 Dawn’s ultimate goal for completely her bachelor’s was to get her dream job of

teaching. She had two boys at home, one in elementary school and the other in high

school. Dawn remained working full time at her hospital job and said her husband’s

good income was a factor in her being able to afford to go back to college. They are

middle class. She felt at this point of her life, with her maturity, she was more than ready

to start school again.

Halfway through her teaching degree, a high school administrator called and told

Dawn about an opening for an art teacher. Before she even finished her bachelor’s

degree, Dawn interviewed and was hired on as an art teacher with a provisional license.

“Two weeks before school started, had never been in an art classroom, I don’t have a

teaching license, never did an on-the-job teaching practicum, lesson plan, nothing . . . I’m

hired to teach.” Dawn said that when the students came into her classroom the first day,

she was terrified. “They were huge, and some of the boys already had mustaches! I just

prayed that I could make it through.”

Dawn’s advisor at the university was not helpful in coordinating her schooling.

Her provisional licensure was time sensitive and Dawn needed to have a degree plan that

would ensure she completed the requirements to keep her job. Although Dawn

repeatedly asked her advisor for a degree plan, he did not provide one. Dawn was

anxious and frustrated with the poor advisor. She took classes for a year before she

finally went to the head principal of the high school where she taught and explained her

situation. Thinking only of her success, the principal referred Dawn to the director of

education at another public university. After meeting with the director at the new

university, Dawn transferred, changed her entire teaching program from career and
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technical education to art education, and had a concrete two-year completion plan in

place. Dawn finally had the advisor in place that she rightfully deserved.

Dawn worked hard to create a support system. Her new advisor was an immense

help to her in earning her online degree. Her husband and network of friends were

always there for her to answer technical questions. “The school administrators were very

supportive of me.” Her brother, who was already a teacher, was a good support for her.

She sought help when she needed it from those who were capable of providing it. Of the

additional services the university provided, she used tech support at the beginning to help

guide her through the online course platform. Looking back, Dawn felt a pre-course in

basic computer skills would have been ideal for her. Dawn did not have an

understanding of what college entailed. Neither of her parents went to college but both

were talented at what they did. Her father passed away before she started the online

program and she said her mother was very proud of her accomplishments.

Dawn identifies herself as determined. She is creative, smart, and sees herself as

a mentor. “I feel like I’m a mentor to my students, to my children, and I’ve become a

better mentor now than I was 10 years ago.” She says she feels insecure and unsure

about moving forward at times. She admits to being unorganized and messy but can pull

it together when needed to get important things done. She rolls with the punches. She’s

friendly, although, “I can be very snarky.” She states that as a 51-year-old woman, she

has finally accepted herself as a person with strengths and faults. She feels that she

didn’t have the confidence in herself to complete a degree when she was in her twenties

and thirties.

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 To Dawn, motherhood gave her a sense of a new reality. She feels motherhood

shows a person that, “life isn’t just about you, but it is the hardest thing, too.” She looks

at people who don’t have children and thinks, “how sad for you and then I think, how

good for you.” Dawn says she struggles with the balance between caring for the needs of

self and others. Dawn’s children were a motivation for her to continue with her

schooling and to not quit. It was important to her that they saw her living her dream. “I

didn’t want to stop. I had this in my hand. Now, I have it. I want to keep it.”

Dawn’s determination helped her overcome her obstacles. She was very

organized with her study habits, though it took her a while to discover successful,

workable study habits that worked for her. She would read through her coursework, take

notes, highlight, and separate out the important pieces. Then, when it came time for the

required writing assignment, she could look back on her organized notes and complete

her assignment efficiently. So, if she had two weeks to complete an assignment, she read

during week one and then worked on and completed her paperwork during week two.

To a fellow mother thinking about starting an online degree, Dawn would tell her

this: “I would tell her to make sure that you get help first. These are the issues that I

have. And I would tell her to make sure you set up a time every day.” Dawn would also

advise her to let go of unimportant things, like housework, and instead, spend free time

with your children. About completing an online degree with a family and children, she

said, “We can be tired for a while and we’ll make it through it, but everybody else around

doesn’t deserve to fall apart because you’re doing this.” Dawn also had advice for

college administrators and faculty. She said:

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 I think the faculty needs to make our classes relevant to what we’re teaching, for
what we’re learning, or for what we’re going into because if they’re not relevant, I
am sitting there wasting my time and I got laundry at home to do and dishes to do
and kids crying and I paid for it. Teach me something that I can take with me that
means something.

And, whether a teacher knows it or not, Dawn said that the students know when the

teacher is not prepared.

Dawn has an idea that she believed might help other mothers be successful in

online classes, “I think just helping a new online student. Make sure they understand the

online system.” She suggested that daycare could be provided to ensure online students

could attend the sessions and have a safe place to ask basic assignment policy instruction

questions and discuss other technical issues.

In the end, Dawn earned the job she always wanted. “I’m where I want to be.”

With her bachelor’s degree in hand and the additional teaching requirements completed,

she decided not to complete her master’s degree. Dawn did not think the time and dollar

amount required, at her age, was worth it. Her goal had been reached.

Ellen

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know what's flat,
You've never seen flat.

When travelers pass through across our great plain,

They all view our home they all say the same:
"It's simple and flat!" They've not learned to see,
The particular beauty that's now part of me.

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know what's flat. (Bouchard, 1998, p. 12)

Ellen is a 35-year-old mother of four. She is married; she has a 19-year-old

stepdaughter and three biological boys ages 8, 7, and 2. In 2006, she completed her
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bachelor’s degree in business online through a public university. It took her nine years to

complete the degree. She is the first person in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree.

When she started her online degree, Ellen already had her stepdaughter and then

had two of her three boys during this time. Prior to going to college, she considered

herself to be middle to low income. She earned her associate’s degree online before

deciding to pursue her bachelor’s degree. She always knew she wanted a bachelor’s

degree and, therefore, kept taking classes here and there for the next several years. She

did not have time or finances to go back to school full time.

Ellen’s employer was very supportive of her decision to continue school beyond

her associate’s degree and Ellen was allowed to do schoolwork during her work hours.

Consequently, Ellen’s employer made it a very easy decision for her to continue her

education. Her husband was also very encouraging and a huge motivator for her. He was

also studying for his master’s degree at the same time; she thought if he could do it, so

could she. They graduated at the same time and were able to participate in the graduation

ceremony together.

Ellen grew up in a household with parents who always stressed the importance of

education and wanted all of their children, four in all, to go to college. The family never

wanted for anything, but she saw her parents struggle for what they were able to provide.

She always thought “going to college was never not an option.” She chose a degree

program that offered mostly online classes because of her children and family. She had a

full-time job during the day as well. With online classes, she could do it on her own

schedule. She worked ahead when she could and at her own pace. It provided her the

flexibility she needed.

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 Ellen defines herself first and foremost as a mom. “My kids mean everything and

anything to me and second, I’m a wife.” She listed several positive things about herself:

a good person and friend, social, honest, hardworking. She works hard for herself. She

is very upbeat and likes telling other people, “I’m a good mom because I work.” Ellen

likes the feeling of accomplishment she gets working outside the home along with her

accomplishments inside the home. She simply wanted it all and strove to make herself

and her family happy.

Ellen’s personal strength of stubbornness also came into play with earning her

degree; however, she called it her strength and her weakness. It helped her do what she

needed to do and not take “no” for an answer, but she also thought it could make her too

pushy. As long as she was able to finish something, she was satisfied with doing things

her way.

Motherhood is the most important thing to Ellen. She tries to emulate her mother

with her own family. “My mom was fantastic,” she said. Ellen further elaborated:

She would take time and sit down with us and I remember sometimes she did not
always have the most patience with us when we wanted her to help us do our
homework, so I always try to remember that even though the last thing I want to
do is sit and read for 30 minutes. . . . It’s important to them, so it’s important to
me.

Ellen is “fiercely proud” of her own children and would do anything for them.

She loves being a mother. At one time, she was told she could never have children so she

felt that each pregnancy was a true blessing for her and her husband.

The start of Ellen’s bachelor’s degree pursuit was full of personal challenges. She

got married in March, lost her job in April, started school in May and, in June, her dad

passed away. Her employer gave her time off to deal with her dad’s death but she knew
96
she had to keep going. Her schooling and her job were important to her. She knew she

didn’t want her family to continue living paycheck to paycheck.

She always had the support of her husband, parents, and boss; her instructors were

also very helpful to her in completing her online degree. “All of my online instructors

were fantastic . . . I feel [they] went above and beyond to help me.” She got to know one

instructor particularly well, which made her realize that they did care about the students

and she should not be afraid to approach them or ask questions. She was able to work out

an arrangement with another instructor so she was able to complete her class ahead of

schedule before her second son was born. About her positive relationship with her

instructor, Ellen said, “I think she respected the fact that I wanted to finish before he was

born instead of taking an incomplete.”

Ellen learned that being proactive as a student helped. She knew she had to take

initiative before a problem became too big and ask questions sooner rather than later. If

her instructors were unable to help directly, another student was encouraged to help her.

Of her schooling, she said, “It was overall a great experience and if I had it to do over

again I would in a heartbeat.”

Two of her biggest barriers to earning an online degree were time and money.

She and her husband were able to find the time for her and they figured out the money.

She has student loans, but remarked “that’s okay.” There were a couple times she felt

like giving up on a certain class but her boss pushed her to keep trying. “She was so

phenomenal.” Her boss had an attitude of family first and Ellen felt fortunate to have had

a job that was so accommodating.

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 The prairie is flat and when rivers exceed their banks, the water spreads far and

wide. In 2012, the Missouri River devastated Ellen’s town and her house flooded up to

the second floor. She had two children and a baby at home. Her family had to

temporarily move in with relatives. They decided to refurbish their own home and

moved back into just the upper floor of their home while this was being done. “I

struggled after the flood.” Seeing her house in disrepair every day was very difficult for

her and she became depressed at this time. Ellen knew she could not let something like

this get her down and so she was proactive about her depression and decided to go on

anti-depressant medication. Ellen was still on this medication at the time of this study.

Being a mother impacted her ability to complete her degree in a positive way. “I

wanted to show my kids that you can do anything you put your mind to, no matter how

difficult it may seem or how tough it might be.” Ellen’s children were a big motivational

factor. It was important that they see she wasn’t a quitter and that she could overcome

any problems that stood in her way. Even in the midst of being pregnant, dealing with

the fatigue that came with it, and taking care of her children, she loved that she had her

children and her family in addition to her schooling and her work.

Ellen believes that one challenge of online classes, compared to a traditional in-

class setting, was the group assignments this method of learning entailed. It was a little

tough to use just e-mail to coordinate with other students. She felt in-class group

discussions were easier and more efficient. Another challenge came with the lack of

actual hands-on experience. One particular project required her to virtually assemble a

motherboard on a computer. She thought she would have learned and retained the

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information better had she been able to touch the pieces. “Other than that,” she said, “I

loved everything about my online classes.”

Ellen did not choose to use the academic support and student services offered

such as tutoring. Her husband was a teacher and helped her with math courses. Another

friend was an English teacher whom she could rely on for questions in that subject. In

light of this support, university tutoring was not applicable to her situation.

One of Ellen’s personal strategies for completing school work was to work ahead.

“I made sure to stay on top of everything.” Staying organized made it easier to not get

behind. From her previous online courses, she knew, “it was very easy to let yourself get

behind.” She logged onto her classes every day and was always double checking her

assignments and schedules. The most difficult schedule she made for herself was taking

two classes in one six-week period. However, she had to double up in order to have a

break after one of her children was born. She felt great when both classes were done but

wouldn’t recommend others do this.

Ellen offers the following advice for other mothers who might be interested in

taking online courses:

Make sure that you’re just as important as your kids and you’re doing this not
only for yourself but for your children and that it’s okay to take time. It’s okay to
leave them with their dad or a babysitter if you have homework to do. You need
to. If you really want to do this, then you have to know that it’s okay to do that
and it’s okay to ask for help. Don’t let yourself get behind and do a little bit every
day if you can, when the kids are napping, when they go down to bed at night.
The clothes will still be there tomorrow. If they need to be folded, it will be fine.
Just make sure that you know you’re worth it and that you will be so proud of
yourself and your children will be proud of you when they find out what you did.
And, you’ll never regret it.

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To college and university staff and faculty, Ellen said they should understand when

someone has a child. They should still have the highest expectations of women who are

mothers, but provide more flexible scheduling. Ellen elaborated:

Make sure that they [faculty and staff] remember to think of their students as
people—people that are alive with jobs and family and husbands and children and
a home. Rarely is anyone just a college student, like that’s the only thing that
they’re doing right now. You’ve got to think of them as people and not just
students. They have lives.

At the time of this study, Ellen was thinking about continuing on with her

master’s degree but had not completely decided what subject most interested her. Her

employer offers three free classes a year, although not online. Her husband would have

to sacrifice some of his activities and it would be difficult to work around classroom-

based coursework. At the time, she was not there yet but was still leaving that door open.

Jenna

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know the wind,
You can't know the wind.

Our cold winds of winter cut right to the core,

Hot summer wind devils can blow down the door.
As children we know when we play any game,
The wind will be there, yet we play just the same.

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know the wind. (Bouchard, 1998, p. 8)

Jenna is a 36-year-old single mother of a busy and athletic 15-year-old boy.

Jenna started a degree as a traditional student at a private, Catholic university, but had a

baby when she was 21 years of age and had to quit college. Jenna and her son’s father

never married. In order to support her child, Jenna obtained a job at a local city agency

as a receptionist and moved into her parents’ basement apartment. Her responsibilities
100
include caring for herself and her son as well as taking care of her mother, who has been

struggling with kidney problems since her mother was seven. Jenna has a strong sense of

responsibility to her family. Jenna talked about growing up with a sick mother.

Well, I think when I was in 7th grade she left. . . . The day before I started 7th
grade they flew her down to Minneapolis to do her kidney transplant and then my
brother took me to school the first day of 7th grade . . . but he just dropped me off
at the wrong middle school. I was supposed to be at the other one instead . . . and
I didn’t know anybody. And then mom’s been really sick and . . . the day before
Christopher was born, she started dialysis. She has been on dialysis . . . it will be
16 years this year.

Jenna performs all of the homemaker duties for her son and her parents. “So I cook,

clean, wash clothes. I love washing clothes. I go to all of my son’s games. And I take

my mom to her doctor appointments.”

Jenna explains that while most things she did were for other people, going back to

college was what she did for herself. “I feel good that I’m doing it. I think once I’m

done it will hit me that I’ve actually finished. It just hasn’t hit me, you know.” At the

time of this study, Jenna was finishing her final class and was to graduate in May 2013.

Jenna chose to enroll in online courses at a local public community college and then

continue with her degree at a public university in the same system. Online education

made the most sense for Jenna because of her busy work and family life. She repeatedly

mentioned that she was too old to attend traditional college classes. Jenna declared that

she just wouldn’t feel comfortable sitting in a college class full of recent high school

graduates.

Jenna was fortunate because her employer was supportive of her education. Not

only did her employer pay for her tuition, but her supervisors encourage her to do

homework during the workday. Jenna explained how this arrangement worked.
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 As long as we’re not busy. You know, like right now we’re getting busy, because
it’s summer, but you know in the winter months, you know, a lot of people really
don’t come in or whatever, so then I’ll just do assignments in between phone calls
on my keyboard. As long as my work gettin’ done. You know, if like someone
would bring a job. . . . ‘Can you type me some labels?’ Okay, that comes first
before I do this homework. Okay, get that done and really it’s been fine and if I
need more time, I’ll just stay after work and do it. Like, I’ll go down at night
sometimes and sit there. No one’s there, because it’s quiet.”

Because of her enormous responsibilities at home, Jenna has developed a very

stringent work ethic.

If you’re going to give me something to do at work, I don’t procrastinate. It’s

going to get done. Like, say, they’ll bring me something to do at work and I’ll
say, ‘When do you need this?’ ‘Well, whenever . . .’ ‘Well, it’ll be done before I
leave today.’

Jenna never left anything unfinished on her desk. It was going to be done. Jenna

explained:

It’s done that day before I leave or I freak out. I have to have everything done,
because if something happens with my mom or Chris breaks something or does
whatever, I know my work is done at work and I can be gone. You know what I
mean?

For the same reasons, Jenna also worked ahead in her classes. “I try to work ahead, so I

work ahead so that then if something does happen, I don’t have to worry about it or stress

out too much, that I’m done or caught up.”

Jenna’s son is involved in sports year-round, and she attended every game and

almost every practice. Jenna often took her books along and studied while her son

participated in sports events. She is adamant that he complete anything he started. When

her son told her he wanted to quit baseball last year, she made him finish the season

anyway. She told him that she also had to finish what she starts; Jenna is determined to

show her son that she was not a quitter either.

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 Jenna was motivated to finish her degree so that her mother and son could see her

succeed.

Well, just like I told her, “You’ve got to be there to see the kids graduate,” which
is my two nieces and my son. She’s gotta’ be there for that and to see me
graduate and so that’s a big thing, that her kids have college degrees and so . . .
Yeah, I’ll get it done so she’s there to see it.

Jenna was also motivated to finish her degree so that her employer would be proud of

her. Jenna graduated in May 2013 after earning her bachelor’s degree. She planned to

continue working at her current job and looked forward to a raise in pay. Jenna said that

once she completes her degree, she will be happy to spend more time with her son and

mother.

Leah

A part of these things that I've said that I know,

The wind, sky and earth, the storms and the snow.
Best say you have—and then we'll be one,
For we will have shared that same blazing sun. (Bouchard, 1998, p. 28)

Leah is a talkative 29-year-old woman. Leah is married and has one biological

son, age four, and one stepson, age 11. Her income level prior to obtaining her degree

was low income. Leah has three educational degrees: associate and bachelor’s degrees in

business management and a master’s degree in business administration. All degrees were

completed online. She attended a for-profit institution for her associate and bachelor’s

degrees and a private, Catholic institution for her master’s degree. At the time of this

study, Leah worked as a recruiter/online advisor at a Catholic university. She started her

bachelor’s degree through accelerated online classes in the spring of 2010.

Leah was adopted at birth. After Leah was brought into the family, her adoptive

parents subsequently had three boys, biologically. Leah said that her adoptive parents
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had wanted boys, and once they got what they wanted, they no longer wanted her. Leah

was physically and emotionally abused by her adoptive mother and understood early on

in life, around the age of seven, that the abuse was unjustified. As a small child, Leah

decided that the things said to her verbally were mean, untrue, and unfounded. Of her

adoptive mother, Leah said, “Because I didn’t come from her. She wasn’t my mother.

She was evil. I was nothing like her . . . I was just my own person. I developed my own

thoughts.”

Leah told of a time when she was only three years old. She and her adoptive

mother and brothers were caught in a downpour as they left a store. She described how

her mother grabbed the boys and rushed them through the parking lot and left her

standing in the rain alone. At that time, she knew she was unloved.

The night before her 18th birthday, Leah ran away from home. She became

emancipated from her adoptive family and has had little to no contact with them. She has

had no contact with her adoptive mother at all. At this point, she had already found her

biological family and had chosen to move closer to them. Unfortunately, at the time of

this study, she maintained minimal contact with them because of the negativity she

experienced with that family also. She did, however, meet her husband during this time.

Despite her upbringing, Leah was a very empowered woman. She was positive

and upbeat; she was a social person and chose to be around like-minded people. She

knew she was the one in control of achieving her goals. Leah decided to obtain her

associate degree at the age of 21. Prior to this time, she had no money to afford it and

had no support system in place. After running away from home, Leah said, “There was

no future at that point for me because I didn’t know where I was going. I got my GED,
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but I never took a SAT. I never took an ACT.” However, at 21 years of age, she felt that

now she was mature enough to start college.

Not knowing anything about financial aid or how the college system works, she

decided to start online courses at a for-profit institution. Of those first days in college,

she said, “I pretty much failed my first three semesters because I didn’t know what I was

doing. I didn’t have any support. I had nobody.” Eventually, however, she was able to

complete her degree.

During this time, Leah married and started a family. “When I found out that I was

pregnant, [that] was when I decided to go back for my bachelor’s degree.” Her child was

the biggest reason why she went back to get her bachelor’s degree. “I felt like I needed

to be a really good role model for him and I want him to know that education is a really

big, strong key to being successful in life.”

Leah decided to switch her subject focus and chose a major more in-tune with her

likes and needs. That, along with solid financial and personal support in place, she

excelled from the start. She chose online classes again because of the flexibility this

approach provided. She was working 40 hours a week, including two jobs sometimes,

and had a toddler at home.

Motherhood is a huge part of Leah’s life. Having her children see her be

successful was a big motivation for her. Leah wants to teach them by example, to have

them see her challenging herself, setting goals and high expectations and then reaching

them.

Even with a master’s degree, good job, and a successful marriage, Leah still

defines herself as being “lost.” She feels like she has to have a sense of accomplishment
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and is always seeking that. School gave her great satisfaction; it made her proud and

happy to accomplish classes with good grades but she added, “I’m always seeking for

appraisal . . . trying to make somebody else happy.” Through all of this, though, Leah

was still outgoing and positive. She also defines herself as a learner. “My brain is like a

sponge. So that’s why I love college so much, too. I like to learn new things all the

time.”

Leah faced challenges in the process of obtaining her bachelor’s degree. Because

of her emancipated background in another state, financial aid was problematic. The legal

definition and rules of emancipation differed in the state of her birth from those in the

state she now resided in as an adult. Because of this, she needed information about her

parents on her financial aid forms and until this was provided, she would be denied

financial aid. The information was personally hard for her to obtain but, nonetheless, she

was able to eventually get the information needed. She stated that the entire experience

of enrolling was difficult for her.

She also chose accelerated online courses, which constituted her biggest challenge

of taking online classes. This challenge involved learning a semester’s worth of

information within a five-week period. Quality of learning was important to her and, as a

result, she suggests not doubling up on classes as she had done. Leah felt she was not

able to fully enjoy or appreciate one class because of having to refocus her attention on

the next one and vice versa.

Despite this challenge, she felt the flexibility online classes provide was

invaluable. Leah said, “You can travel. You can go to work. You can take care of your

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family and at the end of the night, you can pop on your computer and start studying.”

Leah felt that online education was a great fit for her.

Leah’s biggest support for earning her online degree came from her husband and

the dean of students at the for-profit college she attended. The dean was the one who

actually suggested she try online courses because of her busy work and family schedule.

These key people were constant supporters of her schooling. It also helped that in

scheduling her own class time, Leah planned her time down to the day she would get an

assignment done. If the instructor handed her an assignment three weeks in advance, she

planned her schedule three weeks in advance and tried to get everything done in half the

time the instructor allotted.

Leah’s advice for other mothers thinking of continuing their education online is to

go for it. “I tell them it’s the best opportunity; and they can do it, especially for their

child, so their child can see them as a wonderful role model.” A good support system is

essential as are good instructors and advisors. Leah thinks her initial failing at college

may have been different if she had a good role model in place; as she said, “if somebody

would have come up to me, it would have made me feel great.” As a result, it is

important for her to strive to be a role model for others in her job as a university advisor.

She learned on her own to never give up, even when she was failing class. She said,

“Don’t ever give up and don’t ever beat yourself up. Just don’t give up. Just keep going.

Learn from your mistakes.” Leah advocates for others like herself.

Women can do anything. You set your mind to it; you can accomplish it. You
just have to motivate yourself. You have to make sure you challenge yourself and
you have to make sure you have a wonderful support system and a lot of that
comes from the college administrators.

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 Leah’s advice for university administrators and faculty focuses on providing a

collaborative working environment. Leah believes the way to a great student experience

is by creating good working relationships among everyone at all levels of the

postsecondary institution. Rather than just implementing policy and procedure, Leah

believes setting an example of those rules speak volumes and that a personal touch is

very much needed to inspire and create successful female graduates.

Mary

I’ve lain on the prairie and heard the grasses sigh.

I’ve stared at the vast open bowl of the sky.
I’ve seen all those castles and faces in clouds,
My home is the prairie, and I cry out loud. (Bouchard, 1998, p. 26)

Mary is a 55-year-old mother and grandmother. She is married, is from a middle

class family, and has four children. At the time she obtained her degree, her children

were 4, 19, 21, and 23 years of age. She now has two grandchildren 8 months and 3

years old. Mary is also a registered tribal member of the Chippewa Tribe. Mary first

attended college right out of high school and obtained an associate degree so she could

become a legal secretary. She went back to school at the age of 48 and completed her

bachelor’s degree in business administration in just over two years.

Prior to earning her bachelor’s degree, Mary worked part time and was the main

caretaker for her children. She identifies herself first as a mother and grandmother, a

nurturer by nature. Because her mother was not the primary caregiver in her life, Mary

wanted to make sure she was present in her children’s younger years. Mary began to cry

as she told me how she missed her mother as a child. Her mother’s employment took her

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out of the house days, nights, and weekends. She usually just saw her mother in the

mornings before school. Mary described this painful memory:

The only way they could make it economically was for my mom to work at the
hospital as a nurse’s assistant from three to 11; so, as a kid, she was gone by the
time we got home until my dad got off. So I always felt like I was abandoned,
which is strange. She would be up in the morning and she would get us ready for
school and out the door we’d go, but by the time we’d come home, she would be
gone and by the time she got off of work we were long in bed. You know, she
had to work 40 hours a week and a lot of the time she worked weekends . . . There
was no female to get close to.

Mary decided to return to school a second time in order to secure her financial

and socioeconomic situation. She spoke of a friend whose husband had died. Mary

asked her friend how she was going to survive, and her friend said that even though her

husband had been a hard worker, she would be okay because she had a nursing degree

and could support herself. Mary realized that if anything happened to her husband, she

would be unable to survive financially. Mary decided that she needed to be sure she

could take care of herself should anything happen to her husband, a local sheriff. The job

she was currently working at did not have any advancement opportunities for her and, in

addition, she was interested in doing something different.

Mary chose an online degree at a small tribal college because it allowed her to

work at her own pace. She still had her part-time job and her children and grandchildren

to take care of so the flexibility of distance education was ideal for her situation. Mary

faced initial challenges to success. Difficulties arose for her because she had to take

some classes in subjects that she hadn’t been exposed to since high school, over 30 years

ago. In addition, Mary feels she received limited feedback from teachers of those online

courses and being able to afford the tuition was a challenge. For Mary, online courses

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proved to be a challenge because of the lack of face-to-face time. Most questions needed

to be asked via e-mail and then her school work had to wait until she received her answer.

Some of the tests and assignments were not given back at all so she would not know

which specific areas needed improvement. Mary frequently drove to the tribal college to

meet with her online instructors.

Mary was enrolled in the TRIO Student Support Services program so she had an

advisor who contacted her, helped her get services, and encouraged her to continue. The

advisor assigned to her by the college helped her tremendously. This person acted as the

proctor for testing and the go-to person for any teacher-student issues as well as general

encouragement. Tutors were also available to help with the classes she struggled to

complete. She also received financial and tuition counseling. With the help of her

advisor and the financial aid director, Mary received a grant of $1,000 per semester; also,

three classes a year were paid for by her employer through a tuition reimbursement

program. In all, her tuition averaged $4,000 per semester. Her loan total in the end was

$42,000. At the time of this study, she was paying $250 every month on her student loan.

Mary had an excellent support system in place at home. Her husband provided

additional help with the children. She also had neighbors who were willing to help with

childcare if her school and her husband’s work schedules conflicted. She did take classes

that she had to attend in person, including night classes. Her employer allowed her to do

school work during work hours and she could take off work anytime she needed to in

order to attend a class.

When Mary started an online course, she knew she had to take control of her own

learning process. She would look through everything the instructor provided and make
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her own schedule for the class. Because she could work at her own pace, she usually

worked ahead. Her pace was quicker for easier courses and she allotted more time for the

more difficult courses. She also coordinated her school work around her personal life

and events. Her summers also included full class loads.

Mary attributes her success in attaining her degree to her ability to stay focused.

Another strength Mary has is her perseverance and attitude of not giving up. She already

considered herself to be a confident woman, but as she spent more time working on her

degree, she became even more self-confident in her abilities.

Mary’s advice to college and university administrators and faculty on how they

can help women succeed and graduate is that they provide flexibility and more financial

aid. She said, “They need to understand that when a woman goes back to school, that

school isn’t necessarily her first priority. There are other things in her life that take

place.” Mary added that not every woman out of high school is single and without

children. These younger married mothers also need just as much flexibility and financial

aid.

Nina

If you're not from the prairie, you can't know my soul,

You don't know our blizzards, you've not fought our cold.
You can't know my mind, nor ever my heart,
Unless deep within you, there's somehow a part...
A part of these things I’ve said that I know,
The wind, sky and earth, the storms and the snow.
Best say you have—and then we’ll be one,
For we will have shared that same blazing sun. (Bouchard, 1998, p. 28)

Nina is a 34-year-old mother of three girls whose ages are 3, 15, and 17. She is

separated from her husband and is soon to be divorced. It is important to know that Nina

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is a cancer survivor. She has had multiple surgeries and, at the time of this writing, Nina

recently contacted me to say that she had found another lump and was soon to go in for a

biopsy. Nina describes herself as low income. She laughed when she said, “My

socioeconomic status when I started school was poor white trash. I was low income. I

was on food stamps, Medicaid, and other assistance and I pretty much received every

government program I could possibly get on.”

Nina had attempted to attend the community college right out of high school, but

she became pregnant and dropped out. Nina admitted:

It was too much when I was 18 years old, so doing that, being a single mom of
one child and then two, working full time, I did it all on my own. It was too
much, so I just dropped out of school.

Although Nina took time off from school, she returned as a 29-year-old single mother to

complete her bachelor’s degree in business administration online at a for-profit

institution.

Nina chose an online degree largely because of her medical issues. She knew that

she would have to miss a lot of classes if she enrolled in a traditional setting; however,

with online classes, she could take her laptop anywhere. She spoke of doing homework

from the hospital bed after she underwent surgery. Nina explained that moving forward

in her courses gave her a goal and a future to look forward to experiencing once she got

better.

There were many life circumstances that could have caused Nina to drop out of

college the second time. Nina faced many medical obstacles during her time as a student,

including cancer and transplant surgeries. Nina was married and divorced; she was

pregnant with twins and one of the babies died; her older daughter met an online predator
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and ran away to meet him, but she was later found and brought home. Despite all of

these obstacles, Nina has a way of laughing and making jokes about the challenges.

Throughout the interview, Nina mentioned her problems matter-of-factly. She spent little

time dwelling on the issues and, even when I asked her to elaborate, Nina focused the

topic of conversation on the fact that she is a living success story. Nina has a fighting

spirit and that attitude pushed her through difficult times in her personal and educational

life.

Nina feels that her biggest strengths are her ability to communicate and her

determination. The combination of persistence and people skills allows her to find

resources and help when she needs support. Nina found that if one person at the

institution was unwilling to help, she would just go on to someone else until she got what

she needed. Nina created relationships with her instructors and kept them apprised of her

medical situation. She found that by communicating openly and respectfully, her

instructors were willing to spend extra time with her. Nina did her best to keep up with

her courses even when she was undergoing treatments or surgeries. Although she did fail

a few courses, she re-took them until she passed. Nina said that quitting was not an

option for her. She enjoyed learning and school was a positive deterrent for the negative

effects of her cancer.

Her advice for other mothers was quite simple.

I’ve got to tell you this. This is really big, and if I can go through everything that
I went through. You know, I almost died several times and I still finished college;
you know, if I can make it, anybody can.

As for administrators, Nina feels that creating a welcoming environment and

establishing personal relationships would help more mothers succeed in college. She said
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that the good instructors and college employees made all the difference for her the second

time she attended college. The first time, she felt lost and alone in a big institution. Nina

confided that she personally needed to feel like people cared about her in order for her to

stay.

Sara

Still, you’re not from the prairie,

And yet you know cold...
You say you’ve been cold?

Of all of those memories we share when we're old

None are more clear than that hard bitter cold.
You'll not find among us a soul who can say:
"I've conquered the wind on a cold winter's day."

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know the cold,
You've never been cold! (Bouchard, 1998, p. 20)

Sara is 41years old, married, and had three children. She was in her 30s when she

decided she wanted to go to college. Her children were about 7, 10, and 15 years of age

at that time. Sara did not graduate from high school but did earn her GED. At the time

of this study, she had earned a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees. Sara had a

rocky career; she changed jobs many times and was still recovering after being fired a

year prior to my interview with her. She is now working part time and is in the process

of purchasing a tax preparation business.

Sara considered herself to be middle to low income at the time she went to

college. She and her husband earned just enough each month to get by. That is one of the

reasons she chose to go to college—to earn the degree needed to get a good paying job.

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She wanted to advance her career and make herself more marketable when applying for

jobs. She also wanted to be an active participant in the success of her family.

Another reason Sara chose to earn her online degree included the fact that she felt

she was lacking in education and overall knowledge. As a woman, she felt that

additional education “would allow her to be more helpful with her own children and

better able to help them understand things as they were going through their learning and

their growth.” She wanted to show by example what was important and how to be

successful in life.

Sara identifies herself as being driven and wanting to succeed and as an “all

around go-getter.” Sara said that she still had a fear of failure though. She has a giving

personality and, in her younger adult years, tried to be everything to everybody else.

However, she had since realized she needed to focus on what was most important for her.

Of motherhood, Sara said, “Being a mom is first and foremost over anything, kind

of like a lion protects her cub.” At the time of earning her online degree, she was

working full time, had a full-time class load, and was trying to take care of her family.

She admitted she depended upon her oldest son a great deal, more so than upon her

husband who worked evening/night shifts. Sara said that her oldest son was the

babysitter during the week for her. Sara explained:

I know that there were times that he really was probably a little resentful, but later
on in life, as he grew up, he understood why I did what I did and accomplished
the things that I did and asked him to help out.

She recognized that he needed to have fun so Sara made sure he had Friday nights and

the weekend for himself.

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 Sara’s husband supported her decision and told her that, as long as she followed

through, he was behind her. She had a small group of friends who were completing the

same college program and so they all supported each other’s efforts throughout. They

were there for each other as study buddies and to help deal with school or personal issues.

The main barrier Sara faced upon enrolling and completing her online degree was

that it had been so long since she attended any school. She had attended a technical

college and those credits transferred. Because of the years that had gone by and the fact

that the technical school she attended had actually burned down, obtaining her transcripts

and her GED information was very hard. Also, it was a challenge for her to access the

online environment and understand how to navigate within it. However, once these

things were sorted out, she didn’t have any major problems.

Sara’s personal life added extra stress to her schooling during the first couple of

years. There were some family issues that arose and she needed to be there for her

husband. Consequently, she had to juggle her schooling, her work, her kids, and the extra

attention her husband needed after the death of his father. She stayed up studying until

the early morning hours. Sometimes she would get only two hours of sleep before she

would have to be up for work the next morning. She did this for her family, to make sure

her husband “didn’t feel that he was being abandoned.”

Sara said that some of the challenges to completing an online degree as opposed

to in-class courses included the lack of face time with instructors and having to work

independently to complete assignments and courses. She considers herself to be a social

person and liked the discussions that a classroom setting brought “because we’re sharing

life experiences.” Online courses required more personal thought and much more
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reading. In-class courses automatically obligated one’s time, which was something she

preferred over self-regulating her time. “With an online degree, you’ve got to have self-

control and ability to focus.”

Along with family and friends to help her through the online program, her advisor

was, “for the most part, pretty good.” Even though she already had a good grasp on

making her own class schedule, her advisor was still there for her when needed. The

advisor proctored exams and made herself available for any questions or concerns that

Sara had as a student. Sara did not take advantage of any additional services the college

provided except for the on-campus library. Her instructors were available to talk with her

when she needed to work through a problem but her student friends were her main source

of help.

Sara attributes her success to overcoming the obstacles to the little

accomplishments she made along the way. With every success, she wanted to strive and

advance further along. She became more self-confident. The little successes made her

realize that maybe a barrier wasn’t as big as she had first thought.

Sara’s particular strategy for studying involved staying up late when the house

was quiet and everyone was asleep. She said, “I was kind of a bundle of energy at that

point in time.” She got by on little sleep but that seemed to work for her. “I don’t want

to say that I was invincible, that I didn’t need the sleep, but it was maybe adrenaline

running . . . just go, go, go. It was nonstop.” She saw her goal in sight and wanted to

complete it now rather than later. She studied whenever the opportunity arose.

Sara’s advice to other moms interested in achieving an online degree is to start

slow, to take a couple classes at first before jumping into a full-time schedule. She said
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that moms need to make sure they have time allotted for both family and for studies, to

have a support system in place, and to let their employer know they are studying because

maybe they’ll become a support mechanism. She advises mothers to ask for help when

they need it and, if they “aren’t getting the response they deserve, keep talking until they

find somebody who will listen. Stay focused. And, that even if you struggled through

high school, it does not mean you will struggle now.” She said, “your outlook on life was

different at that point.” Sara expanded on her thoughts regarding a woman’s role and

identity:

As a woman and a mother, our roles in life change. Because first, we become a
wife or a parent and we have that role to contend with and then, as we move
through life, we go to work; we have responsibilities at home; then the children
grow up and get older and they move out and then it’s back to you again. You
don’t have so many people depending upon you. You know, when your role
changes, you reevaluate your identity and your sense of self.

Sara commented that college instructors and administrators need to understand

that if it is an older student returning to college, it will be a cultural change. “I think that

the academic advisors need to be more involved and more committed to their students.”

She knew of several students who thought they were done only to realize that they were

missing classes. She stated adamantly that there was no reason for that to happen if a

good advisor was in place. When a student is falling behind, the advisor needs to be

there to reach out to the student. “And they need to take that action at a time that’s going

to be earlier rather than later, especially because of financial ramifications of not

completing a class and having to pay money back.”

Sara also thinks that the admission and enrollment process at her private, Catholic

institution was confusing. “Enrollment is kind of your ambassador of first impressions

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and if they blow it, it’s hard to get beyond that. If it is negative and unhelpful, a student

will choose not to attend your college.”

Even with her struggles and uncertain job path, Sara said earning her online

degree was very rewarding and brought a huge sense of accomplishment.

I have far exceeded anything that I ever dreamed that I would do. I’m successful,
my kids are all very successful in what they do and I feel that, at this point, my
ideas have felt higher and more valuable, but, at the same time, there is always
room for improvement and more things that we can do to better ourselves.

Sherrie

If you're not from the prairie,

You've not heard the grass,
You've never heard grass.

In strong summer winds, the grains and grass bend

And sway to a dance that seems never to end.
It whispers its secrets - they tell of this land
And the rhythm of life played by nature's own hand.

If you're not from the prairie,

You've never heard grass. (Bouchard, 1998, p. 14)

Sherrie is a 39-year-old mother of four. Sherrie’s husband is 16 years older than

she. Her husband “had quite a few medical challenges; so he had a stroke. He had a

couple surgeries, like three or four surgeries.” She has two biological children aged 18

and 15 as well as two stepchildren she called “bonus kids” aged 23 and 21. Sherrie and

her family also took in teenage foster children who created “a lot of stress and drama.”

The first time Sherrie attempted college, it was straight out of high school. She

attended a private bible college for a year and a half and then, Sherrie confided, “I was

fooled into getting married, and then came my babies.” Sherrie’s first marriage didn’t

work because her first husband was abusive.

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 I believe that it was difficult to go to college when I was married to him because
he was not very supportive of what I was doing or what I wanted to pursue. I had
tried to take one class before we separated at the community college and I asked if
he could watch the kids because I had to go test at the college and it was very
difficult because he wasn’t very supportive with the children and things around
the house and I was kind of trying to be a superwoman. I think it went back to the
abusive behavior of control that if I were to accomplish this and grow, that he felt
like he’d be left behind.

Sherrie decided to leave her abusive marriage and pursue her college education.

Both times I went back to college [was] after I separated my marriage . . . So the
first time I had gotten separated, then when I went back with my husband a year
and a half later I stopped taking classes again and then got divorced, and then I
got remarried again and I finished then.

Her degree choice was based on time-to-degree completion.

I just called the recruiter and I showed him what classes I did and said, “so what
could I take and finish a degree?” So he said this is probably going to be the
fastest. I just . . . wanted a degree.

She completed her bachelor’s degree at a for-profit institution.

Sherrie found online courses to be like a real-life work experience.

Every single class you were assigned to a team, so you had your individual
assignments and you had your team assignments and it really prepared you for
more what a real-life work environment would be like when you have to work
with other people and sometimes they are really flaky and sometimes they are
supportive, but bottom line you are still accountable and so, even if you have to
carry the whole load of your assignment, you do what you’ve got to do if time is
limited and there is a deadline, so that is realistic . . . It’s not fair, but it’s realistic.

Sherrie found other online students with whom to study and work. She also

utilized Smart Thinking, an online tutoring service, when she was writing essays. Sherrie

did not feel that her online instructors were especially responsive or helpful when she was

struggling.

Motherhood both contributed to and hindered Sherrie’s college success. As her

children grew, and as she included new and troubled foster children in her home, she had
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to deal with a host of problems including drug-use, runaways, and teenage pregnancy.

However, she also expressed that her children were proud of her and that she wanted

them to see her succeed in college. Sherrie said that even when things were really

difficult, she didn’t quit because of her kids. Other challenges stemmed from her

husband’s poor mental and physical health.

Sherrie did complete her business management bachelor’s degree online. Even

though it took her six years, she took pride in the fact that her children attended her

graduation. Sherrie felt very proud that she accomplished attaining her bachelor’s degree

and she hoped that her children and foster children would follow in her footsteps.

Summer

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know the sun,
You can't know the sun.

Diamonds that bounce off crisp winter snow,

Warm waters in dugouts and lakes that we know.
The sun is our friend from when we were young,
A child of the prairie is part of the sun.

If you're not from the prairie,

You don't know the sun. (Bouchard, 1998, p. 6)

Summer is a 38-year-old mother of two. Her daughters are 15 and 13 years of

age. At the time of this study, she had just completed her online bachelor’s degree in

human resources management from a public university. She is divorced and she

considered herself to be middle class. Summer’s college courses consisted of mainly

online classes, but she also had two on-campus classes as well as an IBM WebSphere

education online training.

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 As a single mother, Summer decided to start college because of the limitations she

experienced in her current field of work as a hair stylist. “There are only so many clients

you can take; there is only so much you can charge.” She was looking for something

different, a job where she would be able to expand, progress, and advance. Summer also

had rheumatoid arthritis in her hands and she was afraid that she would be unable to

continue working as a hairstylist because of the pain and limited movement. Summer

underwent monthly intravenous immune-suppressant treatments to control the

inflammation and pain in her joints. She needed to find a job that provided health care

because the treatments for her arthritis cost $1,500 a month.

Summer chose online courses because she had to work full time and online

coursework provided the flexibility she needed to meet her family responsibilities. Her

children are her top priority in life and she knew she would have to work around their

schedules also. Her daughters were both involved in sports and activities. To Summer,

being a mother meant “that anything you do, anything you decide, anything you say,

anything you want to do even, revolves around your mothering.”

Summer’s course load was limited because of her role as a working single mother.

Although she was considered a full-time student with 12 semester hours, she was unable

to take a full sixteen credits per semester because of the impact that would have on her

kids’ lives. Her degree took her just a little over six years to complete.

Summer said that she felt very insecure while she was going to school and upon

completing her degree. “And that’s not me. I’m pretty secure.” At the time of the

interview, Summer had just been hired as an executive assistant, but she had not found a

job in her degree area as yet. She believed that schooling was not necessarily needed to
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be successful in life, although for her, that was the next logical step. About halfway

through earning her degree, she had doubts about whether or not she made the right

decision. However, she had put in way too much money as well as personal time and

effort into school to quit. She wanted to see it through. At this time, Summer is not sure

that earning her degree was worth it because of the time she lost and the money she spent.

The future and the unknown variables of life were “scary” to Summer. It took a

lot of effort for her to change her life in her 30s without being sure if it was the right

thing to do or what she would gain in the end. She still feels her identity is up in the air.

She later stated that she chose to start her degree because she didn’t feel like she had a

choice. Her sisters and friends were getting degrees. Also, as Summer expressed it, in

order “to go anywhere, be anybody, do anything, make a difference, I felt like a college

degree was necessary.” She said she felt pressured.

Summer considers herself to be a competitive person with stubborn qualities. She

came from a family with four kids, all daughters, and her family did not have a lot of

money. Growing up, she never did well in school and earned only Cs and Ds at times.

She said she had insecurity about being good enough in school. Summer recognizes that

she was a beautiful woman so she was usually able to get by with her looks instead of her

brains. So, another reason for earning a college degree was that she wanted to prove to

herself and maybe her family also that she could succeed in school. She wanted to be

more than just a pretty hair stylist.

While pursuing her degree, Summer struggled with a calculus class. She had used

tutors at both her school as well as privately and still could only manage a D grade. This

was the point where she thought of quitting her degree program altogether. She had tried
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to work with faculty to amend her grade, but they would not. Because the curriculum of

her program had changed since she enrolled, the only way she could erase her bad grade

would be to drop out and re-enroll—an option that she decided against because she

thought she would never go back. The entire experience disappointed her. It was an

obstacle to overcome. Summer said she still feels sad that she spent so much time,

money, and effort on a course she’ll never use and in which she earned a low grade.

For Summer, being a mother negatively impacted her ability to complete her

degree because her children had their own demands that took up a lot of her time and

energy. She said, “You go from working, to their sports, come home, get them

something ready to eat, get them bathed, get them ready for bed. It’s 9 o’clock at night.

That’s when you do your homework.” By that time, her energy was sapped. Her custody

battles with her ex-husband and the challenges of raising two teenage girls took much

time and caused emotional stress.

Summer would have preferred to take traditional face-to-face classes over online

classes because online courses are more costly, have more homework, and there is more

accountability. She had a problem with the fact that online courses were more costly than

the traditional in-classroom courses. However, she did qualify for and used financial aid.

She found in-class time easier than the time needed for online work. Summer disliked

that online coursework seemed to require more reading and writing than a traditional

class. She also missed the face-to-face time with online instructors and because of this,

she felt they did not empathize or feel compassion for her personally if something truly

did interfere with her assignments. Summer preferred the socialization of learning in a

classroom setting.
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 Another challenge for Summer was that she did not have a computer or desk at

her job at the salon. She also didn’t own a personal laptop that she could take with her so

she could do class work during her breaks; also, there was no Internet available at work.

That was a “major disadvantage” for her, to not be able to do class work during the day;

she could not log in hours during the day at all.

Additional services that were offered at the university, such as tutoring, were not

very helpful to her. She attempted to use the university’s math tutor. However, she

asserted that the tutoring program “was not workable.” She said there were many times

when three or more students were in the tutoring room, all having different math

problems, but there was only one tutor. She would eventually get help, but then she

would have to wait 10 minutes or so for the tutor to get back to her for the next step.

That is why she chose to pay for private tutoring.

Some personal strengths that helped Summer overcome the barriers she faced on

her journey to degree completion included being strong and independent. Summer knew

that in order for her to get what she wanted, she would have to be persistent. This

persistence helped her in getting through the tough spots and even just completing her

assignments on time.

Summer really turned the focus on herself and her learning while in school. She

stated she forfeited a lot of time with her children, extended family, and friends in order

to get through her semesters. She had no time for extracurricular activities for herself.

The needs of her daughters were the only extra things she had time for. Often at night,

she would help them with their homework before she began her own homework.

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 Some advice she would give to other mothers who are thinking about starting an

online bachelor’s degree include being sure and confident of yourself. She cautions

mothers to be mindful of the age of their children. She commented on her own children,

“If they weren’t somewhat self-sufficient, that would be really hard.” She said that being

a mother while completing an online degree, “is not fun. It was not easy.”

Summer thinks that the college and university staff should be more open and

flexible toward women like her who want to succeed and graduate. They need to “have a

little compassion and empathy.” Additionally, they need to better understand that the

personal issues of a non-traditional student are not the same as a traditional student’s and

perhaps different rules could be put into place, such as, a sick child of a student is a

legitimate reason for a late assignment as long as there is a note from a doctor.

Summer’s experience with her advisor was negative. She needed more personal

attention and support and she felt an advisor could have filled that role for her. She

stated, “My advisors never once asked me, ‘So how are things going?’” She also had a

problem with her financial aid expiring two classes short of a dual major. “I wasn’t told

about financial aid coming to an end.” Her advisors also did not spend a lot of time with

her registering for classes.

Even though at the time of the interview she had recently received her online

degree, Summer does not feel a positive rush of excitement about it. Of her experience,

she said:

You feel like you forfeited so much for a piece of paper . . . Would it cost me?
Yes, it cost me thousands. Emotionally draining? Yes. Did it take away from
my social life, my family life, my life? Yes.

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Toward the end of the interview, she restated her reason for going to school as merely

feeling pressure from society to get a degree to have a good job. Summer is hoping that

once she finds the right job to match the degree she worked so hard for, it will have been

worth her investment.

Reflections on the Participants’ Life Journeys

The twelve mothers who participated in this study shared their life experiences

openly and thoughtfully. Not only did I want to hear about their experiences as mothers

in online degree programs, I wanted to hear their advice for how higher education

personnel can retain and graduate more mothers in online programs. The life experiences

of the mothers who participated in this study are similar in many ways to millions of

other women in higher education today; yet, some drop out while others persist. Their

accounts of life events, feelings, and perceptions are testament to their resiliency,

determination, and ultimate ability to succeed. As the researcher and fellow online

student mother, I took care to listen, document, and portray each individual in a way that

would capture her unique history, struggles, personality, dreams, and vision. In the next

chapter, I will focus on the description and analysis of the essential structures of their

lived experiences.

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 CHAPTER FIVE

WOMEN AS MOTHERS AND STUDENTS: UNCOVERING ESSENTIAL LIVED

EXPERIENCE

I have this evergreen in my backyard that we planted shortly after we were

married. My grandpa gave it to us and that poor tree is shorter than all the other trees in
my yard that I planted at later dates. But, it’s still surviving; it’s stunted and so I look at
that tree and I think that’s a metaphor for my life. I just hung on and, no, it’s not as far
along as some of the other ones, but it is still there. (Beth)

From the vast and rolling prairie, 12 mothers shared their experiences, stories,

struggles, and successes as online bachelor’s degree students. This study is both

qualitative and phenomenological. To complete this phenomenological study, I engaged

deeply in each of the four important processes: epoche and bracketing, phenomenological

reduction, imaginative variation, and the synthesis of meanings and essences during the

analysis (Moustakas, 1994). My data analysis procedures were a modified Stevick-

Colassi-Ken method recommended by Moustakas (1994).

I spent quiet time with the interviews, reading and re-reading what the women

said. In the margins of those interviews, I scribbled coded notes that categorized and

summarized what the women said and included my own observations of their body

language, tone of voice, posture, and clothing. I took long walks alone on pathways by

the river and out on the prairie in order to have the quiet opportunity to reflect and think

about the women and their experiences. I first reflected on each participant as an

individual, and then I began looking and thinking through my coded notes and quotes for

meaningful statements that have surfaced from the participants’ experience. Once I felt

familiar with each woman and her words, I went back again and arranged the quotations

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from them into theme units. I began writing after I had identified preliminary themes;

more themes and subthemes themes emerged through the writing, reflecting, and re-

writing process. At that point, the coding and analysis procedures were completed.

Then I read the interviews again to be sure I did not miss important and meaningful

statements made by the participants about their experiences. What resulted is a beautiful

picture of what it means to be a mother while successfully completing a bachelor’s

degree online. Themes and subthemes spoke to the research questions that guided this

study:

1. What is it like to be a college student mother pursuing an online degree

program?

2. What factors are essential to the success, retention, and degree completion of

student mothers?

Essential Experiences of the Participants as Mothers

Ways of Mothering

Well, some of us like the back roads. We go about things on an irregular path.
Some of us like to do it our own way and you guys can stay on the interstate.
(Beth)

At the heart of my inquiry are the participants’ lived experiences describing the

multiple and demanding roles of mother and online student simultaneously. Cultural

assumptions about motherhood may affect college student mothers, and the pressures to

be what society considers a good mother are magnified for women who grapple with

multiple and demanding roles (Deutsch & Schmertz, 2011; Kramarae, 2001; Marks &

Houston, 2002; Muller, 2008; Williams, 2000; Lynch, 2008).

During the interviews, I asked the women to talk about their identity or sense of
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self as a human being, as a woman, and as a mother. I also asked the participants to talk

about motherhood and what it meant to them. Some of the women’s responses echoed

what Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule (1986) state about what was important

about being a mother and online college student “from her point of view” hence the title

of this section, “Ways of Mothering” (p. 11). Similar to the findings of Gilligan (1993),

women in this study claimed that motherhood was the most important thing to them.

However, the women described the act of mothering and the execution of the mother role

differently. Although motherhood was clearly a priority to all the women, their ways of

mothering differed. Four approaches or ways of mothering emerged from the interview

data.

Another interesting emergence is that, for the women in this study, the role of

motherhood and its intersection with and influence on their identities seemed to evolve

and change over time. Similar to female identity development theories by Josselson

(1987) and Sidel (1990), this study found that as the participants gained life experiences,

made choices, took on new roles and commitments, and formed new relationships, some

refined their ways of mothering.

Hence, depending on the woman’s age, her life circumstances, the psycho-social

developmental stages and needs of her children, and her own personality and goals, her

approach to mothering and what that meant in terms of her own identity evolved and

changed throughout the course of her life. While there are parallels to the female identity

development research of Josselson (1987) and Sidel (1990) in two of this study’s

approaches, not all of the themes within this study aligned with previous research. It is

also important to note that the various theories of female identity vary in and among
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themselves as well. What emerged in the interview data is that although participants all

said mothering was the most important thing to them, the way in which mothering

occurred in their daily lives was not uniform. The four Ways of Mothering approaches

are: (a) Mother Only Approach, (b) Life Balance Approach, (c) Reluctant Approach, and

(d) Beyond Motherhood Approach.

Mother Only Approach

Jenna, Mary, Sherrie, and Nina, for instance, seemed to identify with being a

mother and the more traditional female role as the central core of their identity. They

seemed to reflect Josselson’s (1987) Foreclosures and Sidel’s (1990) Neotraditionalists

who often had responsibilities outside the home, but their primary focus and commitment

was to their roles within the family. Jenna, for example, described a life very focused on

family. When I asked about her identity, Jenna didn’t hesitate when she answered,

“Pretty much the mother thing. . . . Taking care of my son, whatever he needs. That’s my

first thing.” Jenna communicated throughout the interview that taking care of her son

and ailing mother were her top priority. The way in which she organized her work at her

job and school reflected that fact. She said that she completed everything early so that

she could be completely available to her son and dialysis patient mother. Jenna said that

she had no time for or interest in participating in activities outside work, family, and

school.

Sherrie also focused most of her time and energy on being a mother. Besides

raising her two biological children and two stepchildren, Sherrie was a foster mother to

older children and teens as well as to friends of her children.

I think of myself first as a mother . . . I’ve always put my kids first and I like to
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 mother other kids and I have actually unofficially taken on quite a few other kids.
I get the most joy from that.

Sherrie was clear that school and work are secondary to her role as mother. Sherrie

shared the following story of how she came to her philosophy on motherhood.

I think when I was younger, probably early teens, somebody said something to me
that really struck me more than anything. They said: “My job as a parent is to
make successful adults. It’s not to be their friend. It’s not to be smothering.” So
when I had my children, I always kept that kind of in the forefront of my mind—
that I’m looking at a long-term goal—and so when I get to the end of all this
education, they’ve got to also enjoy life, educate themselves, support themselves,
and have healthy relationships.

Nina has very close relationships with her teenage daughters. Of her insistence on

being part of every aspect of their lives, Nina exclaimed, “I drive them crazy you know.

But they love that I’m there for them all the time too.” Nina had children very young, and

she has identified herself as a mother for more years than not.

Mary is the oldest participant in the study. While she had one son late in life, she

also has two young grandchildren. Mary had tears in her eyes when she expressed her

identity as “mother and nurturer.” Mary feels as though she has to work, but she would

prefer to stay home and take care of her new grandchildren and family. She exclaimed,

“If I could do it right now, I would leave where I’m at and stay at home and take care of

[grandchildren] Jack and Mally.” For these four participants, Jenna, Mary, Nina, and

Sherrie, motherhood was the principal way in which they identified themselves.

Mothering was the activity on which they wanted to expend most of their time and effort.

Life Balance Approach

Sara, Ellen, Cammie, Leah, and Angela said that being a mother was how they

identified themselves, but they also made certain to explain that they tried to find time to

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do things for themselves and pursued other interests outside their family. The five

women under this approach described their attempt to balance their work, relationships,

friendships, career, education, and child rearing. They described motherhood roles in less

traditional terms than did Sherrie, Mary, and Jenna. Although Sara, Ellen, Leah,

Cammie, and Angela saw mothering as a key role, particularly when their children are

younger and need them more, they also recognized and attempted to meet their own

needs as women and individuals. Like the New American Dreamers described by Sidel

(1990) and the Identity Achievements described by Josselson (1987), Sara, Ellen,

Cammie, Leah, and Angela believed they could balance work, relationships, and self-

interests.

Ellen said of mothering that “it’s really, honestly the most important thing. I

think about my kids from the time they get up to the time they go to bed.” However, she

also spoke about her concerted effort to make time for herself. Ellen tried to maintain

more balance in her life by buying a treadmill and carving out an hour a day to exercise.

During that hour, she watched her favorite television shows or read with the door locked;

her husband and children knew not to interrupt her. Ellen explained that in her opinion,

taking time for herself made her a better mother and human being.

Angela played in sports leagues throughout the year. Despite the fact that she

described her identity as “mother,” Angela felt that staying active and being competitive

in sports made her happy and that made her a better mother. Angela submitted a picture

of herself covered in mud with her arms around the shoulders of four of her closest

friends. They had completed a “mud run” together and the photo showed Angela with

one leg kicked in the air and beaming.

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 Although Sara, Ellen, Cammie, Leah, and Angela described themselves first as

mothers, these four participants all felt that they needed to care for themselves as well as

their children and families. “I can take time away from them and they’re not going to

think that I’m a bad mom ‘cause I ran to the mall for an hour or that I took a nap for an

hour,” said Ellen. Sara relayed that she sometimes wishes she had spent more time with

her children, but she also realizes that by getting her education and focusing on a career,

“I am the person I am today, and I wouldn’t change that.” Cammie said that educating

herself and working outside the home meant she could teach her children the things they

needed to be successful in life. Cammie explained, “Some of the classes I had to take

with speech or with communicating helped me to see a different perspective, so when I’m

raising my children, I can teach them some of the stuff that I’m learning in a different, a

much lower level.”

Sara, Ellen, Cammie, Leah, and Angela felt that working outside the home and

doing things they enjoy made them better mothers. These five participants sought to

achieve balance in their lives among their different roles as mothers, employees, students,

partners, friends, and citizens.

Reluctant Approach

Although, at the time of the interview, Beth and Angela both said that being a

mother was their priority, they both qualified this statement further by saying that they

came to that identity reluctantly. Beth explained how she developed her mother identity:

You know, it’s a lot easier now that I have kids. You know, I mean, that’s what I
do. I’m a mom and I take care of my family and my identity right now is really
pretty much centered around that. Now, before I had kids, that was different . . .
but there was a pretty good stretch there where I was just like “I’m trapped and I
don’t know what I want to be yet.”
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 Actually I had never wanted to have kids. I mean, that wasn’t ever
anything that I saw myself doing because I never babysat. I never had that
mommy interest that all my friends had. So, when I got pregnant, I was just kind
of like a nervous wreck, thinking I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t
know how to take care of babies and then I had my daughter, Lilly, and
everything was fine and it was really hard because she wasn’t an easy baby, but it
was just pretty much like my mom and everybody else said, “Oh, you just do it. It
comes to you.” I’m like, “Oh, okay. You’re overthinking this.” You don’t think
about it; you just do it.
So yeah, that was kind of like my settling point and also being able to
focus on someone else outside of just me and all my ideas and things that I
thought I was going to be and do and kind of coming to peace with that, that just
because that didn’t happen, that doesn’t mean that I’m a failure or that who I am
now isn’t as good as what I thought I was going to be. I think that was really hard
with the idea. I had all these kind of lofty aspirations like, “Now I’m going to
move to Ecuador or wherever or I’m going to do this or I’m going to travel the
earth.” And I never did any of those things.

Beth said that she enjoyed and loved her children, but when she learned that she

was going to become a mother, that began a major identity change for her:

Wasn’t the planned thing, so it was a major identity shift for me because I never
ever, ever saw myself as mommy material. I didn’t think I’d be good at it because
I just didn’t have that kid-friendly gene or whatever you want to call it, which
completely changed all on its own when I had kids because it just does. I mean,
you can hate every other person’s kids, but you love your own. So, then that
changed . . . They’re hungry, so you go make them food and you didn’t really
think about the fact that they were going to need food today, but then there’s other
days when I’m thinking a little more philosophically about them and me.

Angela also confided that she never planned to be a mother. She wasn’t

interested in having a family and did not have her first child until she was 33 years old.

Although at the time of the interview Angela said that her children were more important

than her husband or herself, she said, “It was never my goal to be a mom.”

Beyond Motherhood Approach

At the time of interview, Dawn, Summer, and Sara had completed their degrees

and had raised their children through childhood. These three participants had children

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who are teenagers or young adults, and for these three women, motherhood was

becoming less central to their daily activities and responsibilities. Summer, Dawn, and

Sara were interested in pursuing interests that they had neglected while their children

were small and they were in college.

Summer expressed that her main interests at this point in her life are finding a

new long-term relationship and building her career. When I asked how mothering

impacted her ability to complete her degree, she answered, “Well, that’s kind of asking

how being a mother impacts your ability to live? I mean, being a mother is a negative.”

Summer said that her daughters used to love cuddling and spending time with her, but

now as teenagers, they don’t want her in their lives. The girls now live primarily with

their father, and Summer is interested in pursuing her own interests and goals. While

taking care of her children was once a priority that is no longer the case.

Dawn’s days of caring for the needs of small children are passed, and although

she enjoys her older children, she is happy to focus on creating art, her career, and her

marriage. At the age of 51, with only one teenage son left at home, she is ready to move

on to other interests. She contemplated, “I think about people who don’t have children

and I think how sad for you and then I think, how good for you. You know what I mean?

Like, when I see my little nieces, and great-nieces, and great-nephews running around,

I’m like, “I’m so glad you’re here!” And then it’s like, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re leaving!”

Dawn described her approach to mothering as serving in the role of a “mentor.”

She explained that her children received guidance from a variety of adults, including their

father, teachers, and extended relatives. Dawn did not expect herself to fulfill all of her

children’s needs. While Dawn said mothering was important, she did not focus solely on
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her role of mothering when asked to describe her identity.

I am creative. If I were to describe myself, I would tell somebody I am a creative

person. I am a mentor. I feel like I’m a mentor to my students, to my children,
and I’ve become a better mentor than I was ten years ago.

Sara, too, expressed her ideas about the changes in identity and how stages of

motherhood play a role in that:

As a woman and a mother, our roles in life change because first we become a wife
or a parent and we have that role to contend with and then as we move through
life. We go to work; we have responsibilities at home; then the children grow up
and get older and they move out; and then it’s back to you again. You don’t have
so many people depending upon you. You know, when your role changes, you
reevaluate your identity and your sense of self.

The women themselves generated these mothering approaches. The interview

questions gleaned description about their identities, opinions, life experiences, and

approaches to mothering. Although my intent was not to uncover unique approaches to

mothering, the study’s rich interview data provided this information. Interestingly, two of

the participants, Sara and Angela, seemed to exhibit two Ways of Mothering. Sara

described herself as practicing both a Balanced Approach and Beyond Motherhood

Approach. Sara’s mothering approach had evolved over time, and while she had sought

to balance her life by having a career and pursuing college degrees, she expressed her

desire to move on with her life and do things she hadn’t had time for when her children

were younger. Angela’s mothering style also seemed to fit into two approaches: the

Reluctant Approach and the Balanced Approach. Angela was reluctant to become a

mother in the first place, and when she did have children, she attempted to continue doing

things that she found fulfilling (such as sports, work, and school) while being a mother.

The work of Josselson (1987) and Sidel (1990) showed that participants in their studies

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sometimes developed evolving identities and a sense of self over time and experience.

While the 12 women in this study all said that motherhood and being a mother

was the most important thing, they approached mothering in different ways. In addition,

the participants’ approaches and practices to mothering varied as their children grew, as

they took on more or less responsibilities at work, and at college, home, and relationships

with partners changed and developed. The practice and act of mothering was

interconnected with each participant’s particular life experience.

Motherhood Is Challenging Regardless of Children’s Ages

The women who participated in this study all agreed that being a mother while

working on an online bachelor’s degree was not easy, regardless of the age of their

children. While the mothers described different issues raising babies, children, and

teenagers, there was no consensus among the participants regarding which age of their

children was the hardest or the easiest to manage. Because of the rich variety of

experiences, the participants also had individual opinions. Sherrie articulated: “I know

there are a lot of young moms that go [to college online] and they have little ones . . . and

that would be a little different dynamic.” The experiences of each mother were unique,

just as children have unique needs, temperaments, and personalities. The unifying

sentiment among all participants is that being a mother while earning a degree online is

very challenging.

Five participants in this study described their individual experiences and opinions

about being online students while caring for a baby. Angela, Leah, Ellen, Cammie, and

Beth all mothered babies while also attending college online. Angela admitted that it was

overwhelming being a new mother and a new online student. Leah explained that she
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was very busy when her baby was awake, but she also pointed out:

Babies sleep though . . . so whenever little man would sleep, I would get my
homework done. And looking at him, just looking at the awesome bundle of joy,
just like motivated me just to keep pushing harder and harder and it still does, just
to look at that cute little face.

Cammie also described what it was like for her to care for a baby while going to

college online: “I felt like supermom. I could be cooking something, be burping the

baby, and then typing something.” Ellen shared her perspectives on the very divergent

experiences she had with each of her two sons when they were babies:

Andrew was such a good baby. So happy-go-lucky and started to sleep through
the night at eight weeks old, and he was just so easy that it didn’t seem difficult to
me at all . . . but Adam never wanted to sleep ever, ever! ‘Til he was a year old,
he didn’t sleep through the night. He was up two or three times a night for two to
three hours at a time.

Beth, too, spoke about the different experiences she had with her two children.

She described her experience with her first baby compared to her second baby:

Did not sleep and by “not sleep,” I mean she was up every hour and a half to two
hours for the first nine months of her life and then after that was still up a couple
times a night and so I was severely sleep deprived for the first four years and then,
with my second one, she has been sleeping through the night at five weeks and I
thought, ‘Oh, thank you, God. You knew that I could not do that again.’

For the participant mothers with babies, the experience differed because babies are

different. The experience of mothering while going to college online varied throughout

the ages and stages of their child’s development, and across participants.

While Dawn, Nina, and Sara said that having older children was helpful, Summer,

Jenna, and Sherrie said that having pre-teens and teenagers was a challenge and being an

online bachelor’s degree student is very difficult because of this. For instance, Dawn,

Nina, and Sara all said that their older children helped in ways that sometimes made it

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easier for them to complete their college coursework. Sara related that her oldest son,

who was 15 years old at the time, was a big help because he took care of the younger

children, who were then six and nine years old, while she studied. Sara verbally

applauded the efforts of her oldest son:

Just being able to count on my older son to help out with occupying the younger
ones, it gave me time to go to the library, or go to the campus to get whatever
information I needed, or visit with whatever instructors I needed to. He was
probably more of a support mechanism than my other half, because my husband
worked evenings and my older son was always there

Nina was diagnosed with cancer while in college. She reported that, although it

was challenging to also be a mother during that time, she had a lot of support from her

daughter:

My oldest daughter helped a lot. She went out of her way to help. She was
determined to help mom in what I did. So she helped with the chores around the
house and she helped so I could get to my homework.

On the other hand, Summer, Jenna, and Sherrie described hectic and sometimes

troublesome experiences raising older children while simultaneously attending college

online. This group of participants spent a lot of time driving their kids places and

attending sporting events. Jenna’s 15 year-old son was in sporting events year around,

and Jenna never missed a practice or a game. In addition, these participants reflected on

the fact that teenagers sometimes have big life problems. About raising two teenage

girls, Summer commented:

They require a lot more attention when they’re older. They might need more
affection when they’re little, but the mental part is harder when they’re teenagers.
When the kids are little and they cry, you can fix the problem and it is over, and
they go play again. My girls used to cry because they couldn’t get an outfit on
their Barbie . . . I’d put it on, and I was the hero! Now, to them, I am the problem.

Sherrie’s teenagers caused a lot of “drama,” as she put it. Her oldest daughter ran
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away repeatedly because “she was just hell bent on being independent . . . We dealt with

her in and out of the house.” Equally, Sherrie described her frustration with one of her

foster sons:

[He] was 19 and is very outgoing, friendly, loves people, but full of drama. And
he was rolling cars, being chased by the police, and so we’re going steady and
then we get a call that, you know Chris just rolled your car, and we all had to
jump in the car and make sure if he is alive or not. I mean, this stuff happened all
the time.

Yet, Sherrie spoke about tender moments with her kids and foster children as well:

I’d be there often, almost every night doing homework on the computer, and I
could always tell when they needed attention or advice, and they’d just come in
and they’d sit down on the floor or on the bed and start talking to me.

This subtheme is reflective of the fact that the women in this study had differing

methods, encounters, and opinions on their experience being mothers. Jenna’s opinion

about being in school while raising a child was, “The older, the better, probably because

he can do things like make himself a sandwich.” Dawn, too, shared her reflection on the

topic of mothering while going to college online:

And so sometimes the timing is important, like maybe if you have a six-week-old
baby, that might not be the best time, but maybe it’s a better time because they
sleep more, so I’m not . . . going to say what works for somebody and what
doesn’t.

The experiences of the participants varied depending on the personalities of their

children and the participants’ own parenting philosophies and perceptions. It is plausible

that the mother-child relationships evolved as the children and women developed through

time and circumstance. It is also possible that the participants varied in their skills as

parents; some may have been more adept at mothering babies, while others were more

attune to mothering older children. Also, the support systems they had in place at the time

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could impact this too. The reasons why the participants’ opinions varied about which

stage of childhood was most challenging would only be speculative. What is certain,

however, is that the participants expressed a singular message—being a mother while

attending college online is both challenging and rewarding, regardless of the age of the

children

Understand, our Kids Are #1

While the women in this study approached the role of mothering in different

ways, they all agreed that their children’s needs took precedence over both work and

school obligations. Sara described being a mother: “Being a mom, like I said, is first and

foremost over anything, kind of like a lion protects her cub.” Throughout the interviews,

the 12 participants all agreed that, not only did their kids’ needs take precedence over

their college coursework, they felt there was a lack of understanding of that fact on the

part of college administrators and online instructors across institutional types. As Mary

voiced, “They need to understand that when a mom goes back to school, that school isn’t

necessarily her first priority.”

Cammie and Summer, for example, both pointed out that mothers miss more work

and school due to illness than college students without kids. While a student without

children only has to miss class when she or he is sick, a mother also has to take care of

her children when they get sick. Summer felt that when her kids were sick, her online

instructors had less empathy than the instructors she had in a face-to-face classroom.

Regarding her online instructors, Summer opined:

You know teachers doubt you without even knowing you. You don’t have that
one-on-one. Any teacher or any instructor I have ever met face-to-face, I have hit
it off with. I have had online instructors and, you know what, I can’t blame them,
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 because I’m sure they hear every excuse in the book, you know, over and over
again. They have no compassion, no empathy. They’re not seeing you face-to-
face. They don’t know what you’re dealing with. Those are the challenges . . .
You know, teachers don’t want to hear it. They probably get five to 10 emails
every day about why somebody didn’t get their online work done.

Cammie also felt like her college instructors and administrators did not truly

understand what her experience was like as a mother and online student. She related that

she hoped that by participating in this study, more college personnel would become

aware of the experience of women like her. Cammie suggested that college personnel

could help by offering more classes online and by:

Making it easier for moms to succeed. . . . They have to be more flexible, too, to
those nontraditional students because they are likely working 40+ hours a week
and they have a family and bills to pay and things like that. So, yeah, just having
more options and then being more flexible was probably my only gripe or things
that I would like to see better.

Interestingly, while the participants of this study all agreed that they wanted

college personnel to have empathy and understand that their children came first, the

women also did not expect to be treated as though they were different from or less

capable than other students. Ellen explained that idea further:

I would just say be understanding and know that I’m doing my best and that it’s
tough for me . . . I don’t want them to think that because I’m a mom they don’t
have to expect a lot out of me.

In her own words, Beth echoed almost the same thing:

It’s kind of a double-standard answer, because on one hand, I don’t think that we
want to be singled out as less than or different from the other students that are
attending. We want to feel just as legitimate as any other student, but, at the same
time, in reality we are different from the other students that are attending because
of having a life. I think they should make sure that the professors that they hire to
teach the online courses are understanding and welcoming of a diverse student
experience.

Cammie, Beth, Angela, Mary, and Nina all used the word “flexible” when talking
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about how they wished online instructors would behave when dealing with a mother in an

online course. As Angela emphasized, “They need to understand that being a mom is

number one priority for me. Now, even over my career. My kids come first before me,

before my husband, before my schoolwork, or my career.”

Essential Experiences of the Participants as Online Students

We Are Exhausted

All 12 participants in this study described their exhausting and busy lives as

mothers, employees, partners, and online students. Repeatedly throughout the interviews,

the words “tired” and “sleep deprived” arose. Their methods of studying reflected the

research of Kramarae (2001) and the idea of the “third shift.” According to research,

women in the United States perform the majority of home and childcare duties (Deutsch

& Schmertz, 2011; Gerson, 1985; Muller, 2008; von Prummer, 2000; Williams, 2000).

Eleven of the participants said they spent late nights studying only after they had

completed their home and childcare responsibilities, and one said that she did college

homework early in the mornings. As Beth summarized, “You’re going to be so sleep

deprived; you won’t be able to think about it at all.”

Two participants, Jenna and Ellen, were lucky to have the ability to complete

some of their homework during their workday. However, Jenna and Ellen still had to

stay up late at night as well. All 12 of the participants scheduled coursework around

childcare and other job and home responsibilities. This led to short nights and tired days.

Sherrie described her nightly routine:

We’d have supper and luckily my husband likes to cook, so he would almost
always have supper ready. And so we all sit around the table and eat and that was
kind of my only family time because you don’t have any other time. And then it
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 was clear the table and I went straight to a computer and I’d be there often, almost
every night until 2 o’clock, 1–2 o’clock, and then I’d go to bed and get up just the
next morning and then do it all over again.

Nine participants, Sara, Beth, Nina, Angela, Cammie, Dawn, Leah, Summer, and

Ellen, all acknowledged that they often worked late into the nights. They described the

feelings of sleep deprivation and exhaustion, but also explained that they didn’t want to

stop because they might lose momentum. Sara articulated her routine:

Yeah, stay up ‘til 2 o’clock in the morning after everybody else was in bed. That
was pretty much so that everybody else was down and out by 10:30, 11 o’clock.
That was the time to pull out the chips, flip on the TV, pull out the laptop, and
crack the books. And there were times it was later than that. Two hours of sleep,
get up, and go to work the next day. I was kind of a bundle of energy at that point
in time. I don’t want to say that I was invincible, that I didn’t need the sleep, but
it was maybe adrenaline running . . . Just go, go, go, go, go. It was nonstop.

Dawn set up a small desk near her little boy’s room so that he would be comforted

by her presence while she worked on her homework. Dawn described that situation:

So, I went through that year and I’m telling you I am sitting outside Adam’s door
or sitting at the little desk in his bedroom while he was falling asleep doing
schoolwork, but I couldn’t lay down, because I knew I would fall asleep. I had an
assignment due, so I’m literally . . . (You know everything’s done, because
you’ve got to get everything in the house done first.) And so literally, I’d sit
outside his bedroom door and say, “I’m here. Go back to bed.” And I’m typing
away. Adam was five.

Cammie, like the others, explained that she would only get to her homework once

the needs of her children were met.

Well, usually it would be after everything had calmed down in the evening. . . .
Kids had been fed and bathed and stuff and then I would sit down and open up the
computer and just look at the assignments.

Jenna, however, was a morning studier because she had quiet time at work before

everyone else arrived. She remarked: “My brain is functioning better in the morning. I

open, so I have to be there by 7:15 and it’s kind of quiet then.”

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 The participants who were unable to work on homework at their jobs found that

the only time they could study was late into the night or early in the morning. While

some said that they worked on homework on weekends and other times, the majority of

their homework was completed while the rest of their family was asleep. Because

mothering responsibilities had to be completed before they had an opportunity for quiet

time, the participants had to care for the needs of their children and get them in bed

before they were able to work on their classes. This meant that for all 12 participants,

sleep deprivation was the norm and they described themselves as feeling pervasively

tired.

Online Education Fits Educational Goals and Personal Life

Similar to the research of Furst-Bowes and Dittmann (2001), Kramarae (2001),

and Muller (2008), all of the twelve participants of this study said that online education

was their best option because they could fit it into their busy lives and because they could

spend more time with their children. Other factors for choosing an online degree over a

traditional classroom setting included: (a) the fact that they were older than a traditional

age student who enters college straight out of high school, (b) that they lived in a

geographical location far away from a college or due to choice of academic program, and

(c) some of the women felt that online coursework meshed with their learning styles. The

commonality among all participants regarding their choice of learning modality centered

on the fact that online education provided flexibility at a point in their lives when they

were very busy trying to manage multiple roles.

When queried as to why they chose online delivery of education over a traditional

classroom setting, the participants each gave between two and four reasons. Table 2 is a
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graphic representation of what the women said were the reasons for choosing online

bachelor’s degree programs. The table is meant to give the reader a visual aid reference

to supplement the narrative discussion that follows. Each reason will be discussed in the

subsections that follow.

Table 2

Reasons for Choosing Online Education

Name Busy More Time Older Geographic Online

Work/Life with Kids Than Location / Suits
Schedule Other Academic Learning
Students Program Style
Angela X X X
Beth X X X X
Cammie X X X
Dawn X X X X
Ellen X X X
Jenna X X X X
Leah X X X
Mary X X
Nina X X X
Sara X X X
Sherrie X X X
Summer X X

Flexibility for Busy Lives

All of the women study participants reported that they chose online education

because it provided flexibility for their busy lives. Throughout all of the interviews,

participants communicated their experiences of balancing their busy lives filled with

work, school, and family responsibilities. For instance, Leah commented:

I think online is a lot more flexible in the way that it is set up because you can
travel. You can take care of your family, and at the end of the night, you know,
pop on your computer and start studying.

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 Participants also mentioned that working a full-time job made it nearly impossible

for them to take traditional classes. For many of the participants, working full time

meant that they did not have the option of attending classes during the day. Attending

night classes would mean that the women would work all day, go to school all evening,

and rarely see their children. Sherrie explained that she wasn’t able to choose between

school and work; she had to do both:

I had to keep working. I had a family that was depending on me and I had to . . . I
still needed that income so I knew the only way I could do it is if I work[ed] full
time and went to school full time.

Summer’s account was similar to Sherrie’s: “I really didn’t have a choice. I had

to work and I needed that flexibility to do the work when I could.” Ellen shared about

her comparable circumstances:

I didn’t have time in the evenings to go down to night classes. I worked during
the day. My husband coached football for youth in the fall and online was just
me. It was a no-brainer. It made perfect sense. I could do it on my own
schedule, my own time.

Cammie explained that “It was very hard to have a full-time job and then raising her . . .

everything that comes with life. Full-time work was a factor in choosing online

coursework over a traditional, in-class degree.”

For all twelve women, online education gave them the flexibility to attend college

and still maintain other responsibilities in their lives.

Time with Children

Mothers enrolled in online bachelor’s degree programs share the common

experience of trying to balance a demanding life filled with work, family responsibilities,

and school obligations. All of the women participating in this study chose online courses

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because they wanted to be able to spend time with their children. Sara said, “I chose a

degree online because I wanted to be able to still spend my time with my kid while

working on my education, and you know, the responsibility of a parent came first and

foremost to anything else.”

Jenna’s reasons for choosing an online education program also involved her work,

but additionally, she really wanted to be a part of her son’s activities.

Easy for my schedule. I work a 40-hour a week job and then I have a son who is
in every sporting event possible, so I want to go to his sporting events. I don’t
want to miss a thing.

Ellen also expressed that time with her children was a factor in her education decision.

I chose it because then I didn’t have to go sit in a classroom and be somewhere at

some time. I had little kids. I was pregnant with my older [child]. My two oldest
boys, Andrew and Adam, are only 14 months apart. . . . I don’t want to have to go
sit in classes every Tuesday night from five to nine.

Cammie contributed her perspective: “Online seemed to work a lot better with my

schedule and our scheduled time and then I didn’t have to be away from them [my kids].”

As a single mother throughout most of her bachelor’s degree work, Cammie struggled to

continue her education, but her efforts were successful. Cammie offered: “I was in my

last semester of my associate degree when I had her.”

All twelve participants said that they chose online coursework because they

wanted to maximize the time they spent with their children. The women in this study said

that mothering was the most important thing in their lives, and they demonstrated that

fact by making quality time with children and family a priority.

We Aren’t 18 Anymore

Six of the 12 participants mentioned that their age was a consideration when

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deciding between taking online or traditional classes. As the topic of age emerged, it was

clear that, although it was an issue, the various women participating in this study had

different opinions on what their numerical age meant in terms of opportunities and

limitations. Age and what that meant to these individuals was relative to their own

opinions about themselves and society, their roles, identities, and life situations.

Surprisingly, some of the youngest women in this study found their age to be a

limiting factor when going back to college. For example, although Leah was only 21

when she decided to return to college, she chose online coursework because she felt she

did not fit in with traditional age students right out of high school. Leah confided: “I was

worried about going to college because I was older and I didn’t have a family to support

me.” Jenna, although not the oldest participant in the study, was adamant in her opinion

that she would never feel comfortable in a classroom because of her age. Jenna

emphatically asserted, “I would never go back and sit in a classroom. Nope, because I’m

old. I’m 36. I’m getting old.”

Sara, age 41, stated that she initially considered age when deciding whether or not

to go back to college, but she overcame it with positive self-talk. For Sara, being older

than other students was one of the reasons she chose online coursework, but she did not

see it as a limitation or a barrier to her goal of earning a bachelor’s degree.

Age-wise, I was at a point where it was like, “Are you too old to go to school? Is
it the right thing to do because of your age?” And I had to just kind of get beyond
that and realize the importance of the education.

Ellen, likewise, seemed to grapple out loud during the interview with the idea of age.

She expressed her fear of stepping outside of her comfort zone and putting herself in a

situation where she might be considered different from the other students. Ellen reflected
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on her uneasiness.

I like college, but not classroom-wise for some reason . . . I don’t know why/what
terrifies me, but I think I just . . . I feel old because I know I’m only 35. That’s
not old at all, but I don’t know. Maybe if I just did it, then, you know it would be
okay, but I don’t know. I guess it’s a little bit of the fear of the unknown. I
haven’t been in an actual classroom in 10 years. So, I’m just more comfortable
with the online.

Beth discovered that attending classes online did not necessarily conceal the fact

that she was older than her undergraduate classmates. Although she was not sitting in a

room full of much-younger people, there were times when she noticed an age difference

in her online discussion forums. Beth described her experience further:

I guess my age came into play more in student interactions, like when I had group
assignments in my classes and then I started to feel my age because then the other
people in the class that were traditional college-age students . . . You know, I
might make a joke that they obviously wouldn’t get because of the age thing or
they were talking about things that were completely over my head in terms of
entertainment, or gossip, or trends, or whatever. So, I kind of started, at that time,
to feel like I’m an older than average student.

Dawn, who returned to college at age 46 and was 51 at the time of the interview,

related that she realized she preferred online courses after she took an on-campus course

(that wasn’t available online that semester) and became irritated with the young students

who did not take college seriously. Dawn spoke about her experience with age

differences that occurred when she took one night class in a classroom setting. Dawn

remarked:

They [the other students] wanted to just do a little bit, all they needed to get
through it, and they’d come to class writing up their assignment. I’d have spent
three hours at home typing it up and in my folder ready to go because it mattered
to me, because I needed to learn this now . . . and I got irritated because I would
never do that. But I think I much preferred the online, just because of the age.

While busy lifestyle, time with children, and geographical location played a part in

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Dawn’s choice to take online courses, age also came into play. However, Dawn also

responded that her age would not have stopped her from continuing her studies if online

learning wasn’t an option. “No, I was so excited because I thought, ‘What if I get to

teach?’ I have always wanted to teach.”

Interestingly, the two oldest participants in the study, Dawn and Mary, did not

consider themselves to be limited in their choice of modality by their numerical ages, nor

did they use the term “old” to describe themselves. The oldest participant, Mary, who

was 51 years old when she graduated with a bachelor’s degree, commented: “Age-wise,

you know, when I walked in there the first time to talk with the people at the college, I

was never made to feel like, ‘You know this isn’t a good thing. You’re old.’”

While age emerged as a life-circumstance that influenced the participants’ choices

regarding educational modality, individually, the participants thought of the significance

of their numerical ages in different ways. For three of the participants, their age was a

major factor in the decision to take online courses instead of face-to-face classes; they

were uncomfortable being the oldest person in a classroom. For the others, age was

mentioned, but it was not seen as a negative that dramatically limited their choices.

Geographical Location and Academic Program Choice

For Angela, Beth, Dawn, and Sherrie, geographical location was a major reason

for choosing an online bachelor’s degree program. For women living on the prairies far

away from urban areas, online education is the only way to get a postsecondary education

because it would otherwise be inaccessible. According to Angela, “It [the decision to

pursue online coursework] was affected by where I lived, too, at the time, because I was

living on the ranch with my husband and plus, I was working on the reservation.” At age
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19, Beth married a farmer and moved far out onto the prairie, away from any college.

Before there was online education, Beth recalled that she “dreamed of running away,

learning new ideas, and finishing [my] degree, and it just wasn’t practical.”

Although Sherrie did not live on a farm or ranch, she lived in a very small town

that did not have many college choices. Sherrie commented on her limited higher

education options:

It was just that . . . there was no way that I could have gone to a school and the
other thing was location. The only college close to where I live was a community
college. They had absolutely nothing to offer me that I hadn’t already completed.

Dawn lived in a mid-sized city, but none of the three local colleges offered the

academic program she wanted. She chose to enroll in an online degree program at a

college an hour and a half from where she lived because it was ranked one of the top

teacher education programs in the U.S. and she could get her degree online.

For women living in small towns without many brick and mortar college choices

or those living far out in the Midwestern prairies away from any colleges or universities,

online education is the only option for earning a college degree. Four participants in this

study chose online education because it allowed them to pursue their educational goals

although their geographical location was far from a college or university.

Learning Styles: Online vs. Classroom

In addition to a busy lifestyle, three of the participants chose online courses

because it suited their learning needs better than traditional college classes. Cammie

spoke about her active learning style and her inability to concentrate and sit in a

classroom chair for long periods of time.

Actually, I prefer online . . . the flexibility. I didn’t have to sit on my butt. I

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 can’t sit still for too long, so I could get up. Even if someone was speaking on the
computer, they could still be speaking; I could still hear them. I could be doing
stuff, mute the phone, because one of my classes was kind of like a Skype thing.
So I could just mute it so they couldn’t hear me, but I could still see them and
they’re talking about the class and it was being recorded; so I could always go
back if I missed something. It was very convenient that way.

Angela enjoyed the accelerated nature of her program and its singular class focus.

One nice thing for me was that you’ve completed one class every five weeks, so
you’re focusing on that one class for five weeks instead of in a semester, taking
all these classes at the same time. So your focus is that one class in five weeks.

Jenna appreciated the ability to set her pacing and work ahead.

Well, I like online, I think, a lot better because I can work at my own pace. A lot
of teachers put the stuff online. One teacher I had put all the tests online. You
just had to have them completed by a certain day, because I work ahead, get it
done, and then you’re done. So I liked it when they put the stuff online ahead of
time, like a lot of the things about online.

On the other hand, four of the participants felt that online education was not the

best way for them to learn, but they chose it because it suited their busy life

circumstances and because it gave them more time with their children. Summer, Beth,

Mary, and Nina revealed that they would have preferred the interaction of being in a

traditional classroom because they like building personal relationships with instructors

and other students. Summer missed the social interaction with peers and “humanity” of

being in a classroom and explained this further:

You know what? There are some students who will sit in a class and not say a
word the whole semester. I’ll interact. I’ll start arguments. I’ll, you know, get
the classroom going and I enjoy that. I love it. How do you do that online? You
just can’t get that with a posting. You’re like, “Great post; I agree with you” or if
you disagree, what are you supposed to do? Write two pages? It is very difficult.

Mary missed having close contact with instructors.

Sometimes the lack of face-to-face contact . . . My in-classroom courses that I did,

it was so easy to ask the question and have the instructor answer it. When you’re
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 doing an online, you sometimes have the lag time of waiting. Wait a minute. I
want to do this now, but I have to wait because I don’t understand it fully. I don’t
want to continue on.

Nina also preferred classroom instruction because she said that she felt more

motivation in a traditional classroom setting than in an online setting: “It is more

challenging to try and keep up than if your professor is right there.” Beth agreed that:

You have to be a lot more dedicated and a lot more determined that you want it
because it is isolating in a way. And the classes, I think, are getting better at
trying to mitigate that feeling through some of the interactive things that they put
in the course, but it’s still you by yourself working on homework or whatever
else.

Despite the fact that Mary, Nina, Beth, and Summer preferred a face-to-face

classroom learning environment, they chose online courses because it fit with their busy

work and family lives. They adapted to the online learning environment successfully out

of necessity. Conversely, Cammie, Angela, and Jenna preferred learning online because

they felt that it fit their learning styles.

Motivations: Money and Job Opportunities

Eleven of the women in this study were motivated to complete their college

education to make more money and get better jobs. One participant wanted a new career

path, but did not see money as a motivating factor when going back to college. All of the

participants went back to college in order to advance their careers and create new

opportunities. When asked for demographic information, seven of the participants

described themselves as middle income and five responded that they were low income at

the time they started their degrees. Ten of the 12 participants in this study continued to

work full time throughout the course of their degree work; one participant worked part

time and one was unemployed. Eleven of the women in this study expressed a desire to
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improve their financial situation for themselves and their families. Sherrie described her

situation by saying, “We were so strapped,” and Nina described herself as “poor white

trash.” They expressed that earning a degree was seen as a way to improve their

socioeconomic status.

Improved socioeconomic status was a major motivation for Cammie to complete

her degree. Neither of her parents had college degrees and she wanted more for herself

and her children. She described her situation as a single mother as “just very poor . . . I

didn’t have a pot to piss in basically. I was on assistance because I didn’t have medical

insurance.” Cammie related how poor she grew up as a kid in a tiny, rural, prairie town

and this influenced her decision to choose higher education: “Well, I think the whole

point of me continuing on with my education was because I just wanted a better life for

my children, where I could take them places and buy them things.”

Money was a motivator for some of the women whose husbands worked but made

limited salaries. Angela’s husband worked as a rancher. His income was sporadic and

dependent on the cattle market.

That’s why I wanted to get my degree, because I wanted to make sure that I could
provide for my family. Even though I’m the woman in the relationship, I still
wanted to be able to provide for my family too.

Ellen grew up “I don’t want to say ‘poor’ because we never wanted for anything .

. . but it was a struggle.” Ellen’s husband was an elementary school teacher and his

salary was not enough to support a family. “I knew that I wanted to get a degree so that

Eric and I didn’t have to live paycheck to paycheck,” Ellen explained. Mary offered:

“My socioeconomic status really was the biggest reason I went back to school.” She

realized that if her husband were to die, she would have no way to support herself and her
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children. In the same vein, Beth also felt motivated to finish her degree so that if

anything were to happen to her husband, she would be able to support herself and their

two daughters.

Dawn was the only participant who did not mention money as a motivation to

complete her degree and get a job teaching art. She did, however, see college as a way

for her to change career paths and do the job she had always dreamed of doing. Dawn

asserted: “I just knew I wanted to be a teacher.”

At the time of this study, two of the participants had not yet attained the financial

and job security they had hoped to attain. Summer had just graduated and had not found

a job in her field. Summer’s loans were coming due and she was worried about her

ability to pay them. Although Beth had hoped that her degree would improve her

financial situation, at the time of the interview, she had not yet seen that materialize.

However, she reflected hopefully:

I think I had kind of this unrealistic dream, or hope, or whatever in the back of my
head that by finishing my degree that would give me a little bit of a bump in my
current job, which it didn’t really. . . . Not really, in comparison to any other
typical employees, but I knew that it would definitely open up other opportunities
for things. Because I’m in career services, I see job listings all the time and 99%
of anything that pays decent, its minimum requirements are a bachelor’s degree
and I knew that. And so I think I was confident, or at least hopeful, that in
finishing, it would give me some more opportunities and it has. I haven’t taken
any of them yet, but it’s definitely put them out there, which makes me feel even
more confident about future opportunities.

So, although Beth hasn’t gotten monetary rewards for her degree attainment, she was

still hopeful that it would happen in the future. Summer remained unsure and

discouraged that she will ever see rewards of her hard work. When asked about the

resulting impact her degree completion had upon her life, Summer replied: “It feels like I

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lost a lifetime and right now, it’s too premature to ask me what I’ve gained because I

haven’t started my new job yet, so that’s hard to determine.”

Motivation to have a better job and make enough money to provide better lives

for their children and families was a factor in returning to college. Eleven of the

participants were motivated by financial gain and job advancement, and one participant

did not see money as a factor and was motivated only by career choice.

We Found Ways to Overcome the Challenges, Self-Doubt, and Fears

The following section reviews the data gathered in this study that addresses the

second question that guided this study. What factors are essential to the success,

retention, and degree completion of student mothers? The women who participated in

this study all achieved the goal of earning a bachelor’s degree online while maintaining

the responsibilities associated with homes, jobs, and children. When asked to describe

their personal strengths or attributes, every one of the 12 participants used a variation of

the words determined or stubborn. I repeatedly heard them say that if they truly wanted

something, nothing could stop them. While these particular women did succeed in

reaching their goal of earning a bachelor’s degree, they were not unlike other less

successful students who faced real and difficult obstacles, both external and internal. The

commonality among the participants was that they all found ways to overcome the

internal and external challenges they faced.

Throughout the interviews, the women in this study openly communicated the fact

that they had doubts and fears associated with their abilities to achieve their goal. This

may be surprising for onlookers who see on the surface a group of accomplished,

motivated, empowered, persistent women. The participants, however, conveyed that they
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each experienced serious times of disempowerment, fear, and self-doubt. For example,

as a younger woman, Dawn considered herself an insecure person with self-worth issues.

However, she found a way to overcome those negative emotions: “I don’t own those

anymore, and that’s a good thing.” The common thread among the women participants in

this study is that they utilized self-motivational tools, both intrinsic and extrinsic, to

overcome those fears and doubts and persist on to achieve their goals.

The participants described their strategies for self-motivation and persistence;

these strategies included: (a) using small achievements to lead to bigger achievements,

(b) engaging in self-motivating self-talk, (c) setting self-imposed rewards, (d)

prioritizing, (e) self-advocacy, (f) support networks, (g) being role models for their

children. For many of these women, college success—with incremental achievement

along the way—was a conduit to bolster their self-confidence and give them the

validation and worth they were seeking.

At the time of her interview, Summer, a recent graduate, was still experiencing

the uncertainty of the changes she had made in her life. Summer explained her

insecurities about her academic performance in grade school and high school as well as

her fear of failing in college. She also had not found a job in her degree field and was in

financial aid debt, so she was not sure that she made the right decision to go back to

school and get more education for a new career. Summer disclosed how she felt:

Insecure—insecure, because you’re in college. You’re halfway leaving the past.

You don’t know what the future brings. You feel unstable and insecure through
those college years and it would be very easy to quit those college years and just
continue what is normal to you. . . You weren’t sure if it was the right thing or
what it would gain you [or] where you were going to end up in the end of it, but
you know what the past was. That’s comfort. You know; so once you start the
process of that change, which I think, as a middle-aged woman, going to college,
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 it is a huge change and it’s the unknown. It’s scary. So, again, it all kind of goes
back to, like, an insecurity and I was never good in school. Ever! Way back to
4th grade, I would get Cs and Ds, even in 4th grade. So, it was kind of like one of
those things where your family doubted you. You doubted and, like, I doubted
myself. It’s just one of those things that I had to prove to myself.

Yet, Summer found ways to overcome her self-doubt and academic

unpreparedness by accessing tutors so that she could pass and prove to herself and her

family that she could do it. At the time Summer started her online degree, she was

recently divorced and the single mother of two pre-teenage girls. She described feeling

like she had failed in her personal life and that going to college was a way to prove to

herself, family, and friends that she could accomplish something. “Maybe at that time in

my life, I just thought that that [earning a degree] was the one thing I could do right.”

Small Successes Led to Bigger Successes and Self-Confidence. For the women

in this study, success and self-confidence developed over time and practice. Their

descriptions of developing self-confidence closely matched the concept of self-efficacy

put forward by Bandura (1977). These findings also are similar to a study by Hayes and

Flannery (1997), who found that as the women developed their skills and knowledge,

their self-esteem and self-confidence grew. The mothers described their own struggles

and how they fostered growth and persistence. For Sara, Summer, Beth, and Leah,

academic achievement has given them a sense of purpose and belonging. Leah described

herself as lost.

Does that make sense? I mean, I feel like I’m in a good place right now, but I
always still feel like I have to have a sense of accomplishment and I just feel like I
have to seek it. You know, I just keep on going, keep on going. Now, this is
going to sound like, okay, poor Leah, but my biological mother, you know, she’s
never once said, you know, ‘Congratulations. I’m proud of you for doing what
you’ve done.’ Like, I’m not looking for a pat on the back or anything, but I guess
I’m always seeking for approval and I don’t know why. I don’t need approval to
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 keep going . . . Well, yeah, but when I look at my degrees and stuff that I’ve had,
absolutely. That’s the stuff that I need. I like the structure of having a goal and
achieving it and getting a grade and doing well and doing it again.

Leah found that academic achievement and positive feedback from instructors through

grades and degrees gave her a sense of belonging and self-worth she did not receive from

her family.

Beth confided that achieving a degree gave her a huge emotional boost in self-

confidence and made her feel more accepted at the public college where she worked.

You go to work at an institution where pretty much everybody has upper-level

degrees and you’re constantly trying to hide the fact that you don’t even have
your bachelor’s degree; it was like, ‘What are you doing working there? You
don’t even have a bachelor’s degree?’ So, being able to finish that and not have
to feel like I don’t belong and where I am kind of helped, too. . . . You know
when you’re just going through the motions and doing things because you’re just,
every day, trying to get up and take care of things, you don’t really think too hard
about it and so just kind of doing the same thing for me. I never realized it
[earning a degree] was that important. I mean, I knew it was important or I
wouldn’t have kept at it for so long, but, yeah, it’s like I didn’t realize it had that
much of an effect on my mental outlook. You know it was important and
important for work, and the funny thing is that it was important to me for work,
but it was more important to me for work for kind of an emotional reason than
anything else.

Sara also found that she was able to overcome self-doubt and insecurities by

bettering herself through higher education: “I’m definitely driven and want to succeed,

but at the same time, still have that fear of failure and just kind of an all-around go-

getter.” Sara discovered that as she persisted, she began to become more confident:

The things that made it a success were the little accomplishments, the little
milestones you’d make, like a class that was going to be really a challenge and
you were just like, ‘Oh, my gosh! How am I going to ever get through this? I
don’t understand it. I’m not going to get it.’ And the little successes that came
along the way helped you to want to strive and move further and advance more
and do more because the little successes made you feel more confident that, yes,
you could do it. So, by the little successes, it helped realize that the barriers
maybe weren’t as big of barriers as you thought.
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 For participants, Sara, Summer, Beth, and Leah, the structure and reward of

achieving in college gave them the self-confidence, sense of belonging, and motivation to

attempt other and more difficult challenges. These four participants described their

experiences developing self-efficacy and self-confidence. Their small successes led them

to ultimately achieve their educational goals.

Positive Self-Talk and Self-Motivation. Ellen, Beth, Leah, and Angela described

how they used positive and motivating self-talk to get themselves through difficult times.

Like the control-value theory of achievement emotions research by Pekrun (2006), which

states that a student’s emotions can be influenced by fostering self-perception of

competence and control over learning, each of these women described her particular

challenges, and her emotional and motivational methods for getting herself through those

challenges (p. 334). Ellen reiterated her self-talk:

A couple times I felt like quitting or I was going to drop a class halfway through
because I didn’t like the class; I didn’t like the teacher, and she helped me just
think about it for a day and move ahead and decide, ‘Okay, this is worth it. I can
finish it all.’ You know, put on my ‘Big Girl’ panties and deal with it . . . So,
that’s where my stubbornness or what comes in as, ‘Just pick yourself up and just
move on. You have to. You can’t. You just can’t let it get you down.’

Angela also described a similar process. Although there were people in her life

who supported and loved her, she recognized that it was she who was ultimately

responsible for her own success or failure. Angela spoke of her method for getting

herself through the tough times: “I kept telling myself it will be worth it in the end. It

will be worth it in the end. All this work will be worth it in the end.” Leah revealed she

repeated the words “Finish what you start” to herself when she felt like dropping her

English class. When Beth experienced a death in her family, she used school as a way to
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keep a routine in her life. Beth told herself:

It’s not going away. . . . and, I think that was what I knew in the back of my mind
all along is if I quit now, I’m going to lose my momentum and that’ll be it. So, I
just kept going.

Ellen, Beth, Leah, and Angela all used positive self-talk and motivation to push

themselves through times of strain and emotional lows. When things in their personal and

educational lives became challenging and stressful, these four participants were able to

find a way through by saying what they needed to hear. While there may have been

other, outside voices offering encouragement and support, it was the internal dialogue

that they found the most effective for their long-term success.

Setting Rewards for Achievement. Jenna, Leah, Dawn, Sherrie, and Cammie all

described a self-induced goal system in which they used time with their children as

rewards for doing unpleasant or challenging college-related tasks. This method of

motivation and achievement mirrors the self-regulated learning theory, an important

framework which has been used to understand the functions of independent learners in

online programs (Artino, 2008; Bernacki, Byrnes, & Cromley, 2012; Schraw, 2010;

Hadwin, 1998; Zimmerman, 2000). Jenna explained that she used her son’s sports games

as a motivation: “It was my reward. I’d tell myself, ‘You’ve got to have your work done

or you’re not going.’” Similarly, Leah would tell herself: “Okay, Monday you’ve got to

get it done if you want to spend time with your kids Tuesday, Wednesday, and

Thursday.” Cammie’s kids were also her treat:

Try to get it done before the weekend, so I could have that time for myself and my
family, and so it was motivation for me to get this assignment done so I can get
right back to playing with them, and so they really were my treat.

Sherrie also worked hard so she could have time for her family:
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 So, I’d try to always have one day on the weekend that was for me and for the
family, but the rest of the time I had to study and I had to have one day where I
worked all day long to make sure things were complete.

No Such Thing as Doing It All: We Prioritized. The participants in this study

explained that, in order to be successful mothers and online students, they had to

prioritize their time and efforts. This meant that extraneous things like housework and

non-essential people were neglected and ignored. Throughout the course of their studies,

the women routinely and consciously focused on what was most important—their

schoolwork and their children. As Beth put it, “When I think about the things that I have

to get done, my homework has to get done . . . and the other thing that has to be done is,

like feed a hungry kid.”

Cammie, a self-proclaimed perfectionist, explained how she had to deal with that

particular challenge:

I think the biggest one [challenge] at the time was trying to be 100% to
everything. You just realize what you can actually accomplish. I’m a 4.0 student
and that’s how I always was. Well, then you add a family and stuff and, you
know what? Some things might slip. You might not be 100% then or you might
not be 100% to talking with them [family] or being there for them for every
activity because work or school was taking up that time. Or a kid might be sick,
so you can’t be at work. So, I just learned that you can’t be everywhere and
everything to everybody.

Sara talked about the changes she had to make in her life when she started

college. “So before, I had to be everybody to everybody. I used to have a stamp on my

forehead that said, ‘Ask me. I will do it.’ I have since gotten rid of that.” Dawn, Mary,

Cammie, Sara, Sherrie, Summer, Angela, Ellen, and Nina all said that they had to miss

extended family and friend events such as dinners out, picnics, and birthdays. Sherrie

described the social sacrifices she made in order to complete her homework: “I remember

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a couple times on holidays, like 4th. of July, I’m sitting there trying to get a paper out.”

For the participants in this study, missing significant events often caused strain

and sometimes destroyed relationships that had previously been very important. Dawn

explained that putting her education first despite pushback from family and friends was

something she came to accept and own over time because she developed more self-

confidence and a clear sense of direction. Dawn affirmed her learning in this regard:

I have learned to roll with the punches. I think I developed some of those
grounding things that kind of make you look at things and just laugh at it a little
bit and not think the whole world hates you; I don’t own those anymore like I
used to and that’s a good thing.

For 10 of the participants, focusing on children and college meant that their

relationships with husbands and boyfriends became strained to varying degrees. For

some of the women, their relationships were drastically impacted and ended. For others,

there was minimal negative impact, but strain did exist. The women described a range of

relationship strains—from Mary’s “eye-rolling” husband to Dawn’s husband who “was

upset with [me] at the time it took,” to Sherrie’s first husband who routinely impeded her

ability to complete her schoolwork because “he was not supportive of what [I] was doing

or what [I] wanted to pursue.” Beth explained that, although her husband said he was

supportive,

There was major pouting when the baby came so when school started it was sort
of just a continuation of the ‘You don’t give me attention, a.k.a. I don’t get laid
anymore.’ So, it was kind of like, ‘Well, yeah, I want you to get your degree, but
I don’t want it to impact me. I don’t want to suffer as a result.’

Summer reflected on her neglected relationship:

There’s no time for him. No time for him. Think about it—work, kids, and
school. The relationship falls between the cracks. That is a heavy guilt feeling.
Women feel guilty about everything.
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 For these 10 participants, mothering responsibilities and schoolwork took

precedence over the men in their lives. The women in this study recognized that adding

school to their already full lives meant that other things would have to give. They

prioritized their lives around the things that were the most important and insistent at that

time—their children and their college work.

We Advocated for Ourselves. Seven of the participants gave examples of times

when they were faced with a challenge and overcame it by advocating for themselves.

Mary, Beth, Dawn, and Sara iterated that, although they may not have been as confident

in years past, they had accessed internal strength to advocate for themselves in times of

difficulty. Mary recounted her experience advocating for herself and her classmates

when they didn’t understand a math assignment.

I don’t know that 25 years ago I would have been as forceful, but I did have some
of that. It’s just that as I have gotten older, I’ve learned that if I don’t ask,
nobody’s going to ask for me. So as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more sure of
myself. I have more self-confidence and more willing[ness] to expose myself as
to, why do we do this equation this way? Whereas, maybe 25 years ago, I would
have said, ‘Okay,’ and then probably would have gone up after class and said,
‘Can you do that again?’ At that point, eight years ago, it was, ‘No, do this again
because I still don’t understand for sure why you’re doing it that way.’

When Beth was wrongly accused of plagiarism, she had to work hard to prove

herself innocent. Beth shared the following story with me.

There was one instance in my class . . . I had to write a press release for
something and I used a press release that I had written for work a few years
previous. And I asked the instructor if it was okay if I used the stuff I had done
before or if it needed to be fresh and so I knew that part was okay. But I just
about had a heart attack when she e-mailed me and said that she was considering
putting a report in that I’d plagiarized this. She said it was really well written. In
fact, it was almost too well written and she did some research and found an almost
identical version of it online and so I was scrambling trying to find proof that,
‘No, this is something that I wrote and whoever you found online plagiarized me.’
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 So, they found my original press release that I had written and I was looking for
what she had found and it was.
I found the press release that she had found, that looked like almost
identical to mine, it was posted six months after I had written mine. So, I was
like, ‘See, they copied me.’ So, you know I was able to clear it up and move on,
but at the time, if she puts you up for plagiarism, you’re done. That’s it. . . . So, I
felt good and vindicated after the fact that it was all over, but I was really worried
that she wasn’t going to take what I was telling her as fact.

Dawn repeatedly advocated for herself because she needed a degree plan in place

to meet the requirements of her job contract. Nina consistently talked with deans and

instructors so that she could complete her degree while undergoing cancer treatments.

Cammie, Beth, Sara, and Summer reached out to resolve financial aid issues, and

Summer went to bat for herself with an instructor and department chair over a low grade

she had earned in her algebra course. While the women in this study faced obstacles that

some would have seen as insurmountable, they gained the courage and self-confidence to

address and resolve the issues.

We Were Resourceful and Found Our Own Support Networks. The mothers

who participated in this study found ways to overcome the academic and personal

challenges they faced on their path to degree completion in online bachelor’s degree

programs. During each interview, I specifically asked each participant if there were

particular people who made a difference in their ability to succeed. For the resilient and

resourceful mothers I interviewed, the answers were unique in that they differed by

participant. However, the commonality among all of the participants was that, while

some fostered good mentoring relationships with their instructors, deans, or advisors,

they were willing to ask questions and reached beyond the traditional and designated

college support personnel and created a broad and diverse network of support. As Beth

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expressed it, “If I needed to know something, I made sure that I found out what it was

and I did have a very good support network . . . I count on other people for strength when

I need it.”

Another resounding outcome of their shared experience was that, when they

discovered that someone was unwilling or unable to help them, they moved on and found

someone else who was supportive and able to give them what they needed to be

successful.

Sara, Sherrie, Summer, Mary, Nina, Leah, Jenna, and Angela recounted the

difficulties they had with specific subject areas or courses. For example, Angela

admitted, “The fact is that I hate writing. So, anything that had to do with writing [and] I

had to write a lot of papers, so that was difficult.” Algebra was nearly a deal breaker for

Summer; she almost quit her program because algebra was a requirement. For these

mothers who struggled academically, college tutors were not always helpful or available

to them. Time and again, the women found ways to get the help they needed from other

sources.

For example, Jenna reported that she did not access the tutors at her online college

because they were not quick to answer her questions. Instead, she asked her husband,

who was a math teacher, to help her with math courses and she asked a co-worker and

English teacher to help her with her writing skills. When Summer went to the college

algebra tutor, she did not receive the level of help she needed because there were so many

students waiting for assistance. Subsequently, she paid a private tutor to help her learn

what she needed to know. Sara utilized her cohort classmates as a support system when

she faced learning challenges. Sara described those relationships as collaborative and
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collegial:

We pretty much got what we needed out of sitting and visiting with the instructor
or maybe a couple of us getting together and beating our heads on the table trying
to figure out the problems that we couldn’t get. And every one of us, where one
was weak, the other was stronger, so we offset our weaknesses and strengths and
pulled together usually to get through the tough spots.

Sherrie and Angela mentioned that the for-profit online universities they attended

offered a variety of online academic, social, and tutoring services. Sherrie provided

further details about those services:

There were some really neat services actually online. . . . I didn’t take advantage
of it, but they did have tutoring. They also had, ‘cause a lot of our work is paper-
based, so you could submit your papers and they would give you feedback,
grammatical and other, which was nice and they were good and they were fairly
quick about it, too, which was nice. I learned quite a bit from that. Later, toward
the end, they developed something, kind of like a mix between blogs and
Facebook on the school website.

Sherrie and Angela found the social connection among classmates to be the most helpful

resource. They were able to connect with others, work together, and get the feedback and

academic help they needed to move forward in their courses.

Dawn and Mary were unaccustomed to using technology for learning. Dawn

admitted that her lack of computer skills and her unfamiliarity with the online learning

platform were major barriers for her initially. Dawn explained how she overcame her

technology challenges by eliciting help from her neighbor:

That didn’t stop me, because, lucky for me, I have a network of people willing to
help me that knew what I was doing. Literally, Deanna sat down and showed me
how to do this whole thing online. I would have maybe quit at that point had I not
had that help. . . And she didn’t make me feel stupid and she didn’t look down on
me. She goes, ‘Oh yeah! This is hard. Let me show this to you.’ So, it was the
way she approached me with it, ‘cause I think that’s the key.

Ellen, Beth, and Jenna all had employers who encouraged and helped them

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through difficulties. Ellen felt fortunate to have her supportive supervisor:

It kind of just worked out where I got a job at [a university] and my boss was very
supportive and helping me as much as she could and gave me the time, when I
needed it, to go study and to go work on my class and, like I said, I would stay
late some nights to use my computer and my desk.

Jenna’s situation was similar. She said of her employer: “You know it was his thing to

kind of have everybody in the office have their degrees.” Her supervisors were

supportive of her education and were there to encourage her. Beth was hired at a college,

and she said that tuition waivers and time to complete homework during the day were

very helpful. Beth acknowledged that her boss at the time encouraged her to finish her

degree work.

I don’t think she realized that I hadn’t finished a four-year degree yet when she
hired me. So, everything was working out fine, but my boss was the one who was
kind of on me, like ‘Just keep working at it. Keep working at it.’

Throughout the interviews, all of the participants in this study described their own

efforts aimed at creating relationships with people who helped them succeed

academically and personally. Sometimes the support people were college deans,

instructors, advisors, and tutors, but the women also gave examples of college support

personnel who were not supportive at all, despite their title and job responsibilities. For

the women who were disappointed with an ineffective college employee, it was a surprise

and short-term setback for the women who mentioned it. When the advisor was helpful,

it was a positive for those who mentioned it. What is remarkable about the participants in

this study is that when they did not receive the help they needed from a particular source,

they kept seeking out others until they found someone who would step up and tutor,

mentor, or give them the support they needed. Each participant developed her own circle

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of support people ranging from classmates, family members, college professionals, co-

workers, friends, and neighbors. The support systems the participants created were

comprised of an eclectic group of people that the participants gleaned from different

areas of their lives.

We Had to Succeed Because Our Children Were Watching. Like the research

of Leppel (2001), every one of the 12 women in this study said that they wanted to

succeed so that their children could see them get a college degree. Threaded throughout

every interview, was an unmistakable desire to be a role model and example so as to

show their children that education is important and that if mom can do it, so can they.

Although Sherrie, Sara, Nina, Ellen, Beth, and Jenna had previously attempted college

and dropped out, at this juncture of their lives, quitting was not an option, and one of the

most motivating forces was their children. Nina began to cry when she confided, “They

supported me and they were proud of me and I remember my daughter telling someone

that she was really proud of me and it really touched my heart.”

Three of the women in this study articulated some form of “We didn’t want our

kids to see us quit.” For Ellen, completing a bachelor’s degree was important.

I wanted to show my kids that you can do anything you put your mind to, no
matter . . . how difficult it may seem or how tough it may be . . . I wanted to prove
to them and prove to myself that you can do whatever you put your mind to. I
didn’t want them to know that their mom was a quitter.

Dawn commented that she was motivated to show her kids that they could achieve their

dreams, just like her.

I didn’t want to quit. I can’t let them see me quit . . . I can’t quit. I wanted to
show my boys, ‘You guys can do this!’ It was really important to me that they
saw me living the dream I’d always wanted to do.

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Jenna expressed this same motivation in a similar fashion:

I have to show my son, you know, that . . . whatever’s important—finish. Finish

what you started, because I did start and then quit. I have to show him that mom
can do it. We both go to school and do our homework at the same time.

For these study participants, quitting was not an option because they wanted their

children to see them succeed academically despite the obstacles. Leah, Cammie, Ellen,

Summer, Sara, and Sherrie all considered finishing college to be an opportunity to be a

role model for their children. Leah explained the role her son played in her motivation to

complete her degree:

He was a big focus. Kyle was a big focus of why I went back to get my
bachelor’s degree. I felt like I needed to be a really good role model for him and I
want him to know that education is a really big, strong key to being successful in
life.

Ellen similarly declared:

I wanted him to see that I’ve worked my butt off and that I have a successful job.
He is the reason why I’m going all the way . . . and he is at the perfect spot where
he needs that influence in his life right now.

Likewise, Sherrie was motivated by envisioning the proud day she would graduate. She

said that the best part of achieving her dream was that all of her children and foster

children were there to see her walk on the stage and receive her degree. For Summer, she

wanted her children to see her as resilient and strong: “You know, I was just getting a

divorce and trying to raise the two girls and show them strength.”

Sara was a high school dropout who had earned a GED. No one in her family had

a college education and she wanted to be the first person in her family to graduate. Sara

viewed her efforts as holding life lessons for her children:

I guess by obtaining additional education and knowledge, and this goes along
with being a mother, too, that I would be able to be more helpful with my kids
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 and better able to help them understand things as they were going through their
learning and their growth and what’s important and what’s needed to succeed in
life.

Reflections

The themes that emerged from the analysis of the interviews constitute rich,

descriptive narratives of the experiences of these 12 mothers in online bachelor’s degree

programs. They reflect nuances and uniqueness of each of the participants’ stories, thus

portraying a multifarious picture of what it means to be a mother and a student. The

stories convey love, nurturing, perseverance, resourcefulness, strength, and self-efficacy.

These incredible women established communities in unforgiving landscapes, and found

beauty in challenge. Their narratives illuminate the fortitude of the prairie women who

have been raising children, planting trees, building homes, and aspiring for higher

education.

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 CHAPTER SIX

MOTHERS IN ONLINE BACHELOR’S DEGREE PROGRAMS:

DISCUSSION, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND REFLECTIONS

This chapter provides a summary, comprehensive discussion of the study,

recommendations for higher education leaders and future research, and reflections on the

research. Numbers of students enrolling in online college education continue to rise and

that trend is likely to continue in the future (Allen & Seaman, 2011). Because the average

distance learner is female, mid-thirties, working, and parenting, this study gives valuable

information about a key student population (Altbach et al., 2005; Deutsch & Schmertz,

2011; Furst-Bowe & Dittmann, 2001; ITC, 2011; Kramarae, 2001; Muller, 2008; Peter &

Horn, 2005). For college faculty, student support services personnel, administrators, and

policymakers, this study can serve as a foundation for planning and programming

decisions regarding mothers in online bachelor’s degree programs.

The participants’ responses addressed their individual paths to higher education

and the successes and challenges that they faced on the way to completing their online

bachelor’s degrees. The results of this study are intended for higher education faculty

and administrators who are involved in designing and overseeing online programs and

support services to better meet the needs of non-traditional students such as student

mothers so these women can persist and graduate from online bachelor’s degree

programs.

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 What is it Like to Be a College Student Mother Pursuing an Online Degree

Program?

For the women in this study, balancing the demanding roles of student and mother

was both challenging and rewarding. Because the needs of their children were their top

priority, the women sacrificed other personal needs such as sleep, relationships, or leisure

time in order to accomplish a college degree. The women deeply desired for college

personnel to recognize and understand their unique roles and identities as mothers, their

experiences, their challenges, and their stubborn and unwavering commitment to meet

their educational and personal goals.

The participants in this study returned to college for job and socio-economic

reasons and to have a better life for themselves and their families. They chose online

programs primarily because of the convenience and flexibility. Even participants who

preferred face-to-face courses, chose online programs so that they could spend more time

with their children and still work. The results of this study contribute to the existing

research on busy adult online learners who share the responsibilities for family, work,

and study (et., Furst-Bowe, 2002; Kramarae, 2001; Muller, 2008). Women experience

various motivations to return to college, such as career advancement and economic

stability were also expressed, but all of the women participants in this study wanted their

children to see them succeed and graduate, and this desire was what pushed them through

to the end. Consistent with the research of Kramarae (2001) and Leppel (2002), none of

the participants in this study finished college in less than six years attending both full and

part-time.

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 As reflected in the research, the mothers in this study grappled with multiple roles

and responsibilities of work, mother, student, and partner and whether married or not,

they performed the majority of child and home care (Deutsch & Schmertz, 2011; Gerson,

1985; Muller, 2008; von Prummer, 2000; Williams, 2000). Pressure to be everything to

everyone was a commonly discussed feeling by participants. The women experienced

pressure from themselves, their family, and society to be and do it all; this topic was

mirrored in the literature on women’s identity theories and motherhood discussed in

chapter two.

The participants in this study disclosed their experiences living multiple roles as

woman, mothers, family members, students, and professionals in a society that they felt

has excruciatingly high expectations in all of those areas. While the participants valued

their identities as mothers, they also felt they needed to succeed in their education and in

their careers. As the women and their children aged, and as their education came to an

end and they became stable in their careers, they became freer to explore other areas of

interest.

The women in this study dealt with internal and external pressure by focusing

primarily on the most important and immediate needs: their children and their

schoolwork. While all 12 participants said that motherhood was the most important thing,

the participants did not approach the daily practice of mothering in the same way. I

discovered that there were four distinct ways of mothering among the participants. The

participants in this study described their mothering practices as: (a) Mother Only

Approach, (b) Life Balance Approach, (c) Reluctant Approach, and (d) Beyond

Motherhood Approach. These ways of mothering seemed to evolve as a result of time,

176
stages of adult development, age of children, personality, and changes in role

responsibilities and priorities.

The ‘third shift’, as coined by Kramarae (2001), was similarly described by

participants in this study because they studied late into the night when their children were

in bed asleep. As a result, the participants in this study said that their time spent enrolled

as online students while raising children left them feeling exhausted and sleep deprived.

What Factors Are Essential to the Success, Retention, and Degree

Completion of Student Mothers?

All 12 participants in this study said that their children were their number one

priority, and in agreement with Leppel (2002), all of the women declared their desire to

be role models for their children and as their primary motivational force.

The women described their ability to foster self-confidence, to overcome

adversity, and the resourcefulness to ask questions and get help when they themselves did

not have the knowledge or skills necessary to solve a problem. Their increased

confidence was achieved over time as they developed their skills, through what they

gained by overcoming challenges, and by experiencing incremental successes. The

participants in this study coped with the pressures and challenges associated with their

multiple roles and responsibilities using strategies including: (a) using small

achievements to lead to bigger achievements, (b) engaging in self-motivating self-talk,

(c) setting self-imposed rewards, and (d) prioritizing. While strategies for success varied

among the participants, they all exhibited behaviors which boosted their confidence and

academic skills, and kept them moving on the pathway to degree completion

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A Desire for Understanding

The participants of this study felt that college administrators, professors, advisors,

and others did not really understand what it was like to be a mother and an online student.

The mothers felt like colleges and universities were set up to educate students who were

straight out of high school with no families or careers. The literature in chapter two

stresses the fact that approximately 73% of all undergraduate students can be

characterized as non-traditional (Choy, 2002). In addition, 50% of online students are

non-traditional, age 26 and older (ITC, 2011). Student involvement and social integration

studies by Tinto and Russo (1994) and Astin (1984, 1985) have shown that students

persist at a higher rate when they are integrated into the college community. And while

the women in this study wished that college and university personnel would understand

that they had to take care of their children and make money to support their families, the

participants also did not desire to be treated as if they were less capable than other

students. What the participants did ask for, though, was faculty who could empathize and

offer flexibility when their child was sick or they had an emergency situation.

The participants in this study unanimously expressed a desire to feel that their

experiences were understood and that they mattered. The mothers in this study yearned

for more connection to their instructors, other students, and the institution. Throughout

the interviews, the participants discussed their desire to have personal connections with

other people at their postsecondary institution regardless of institutional type or online

course platform. In chapter two, theories of student involvement were discussed, but

research primarily has been focused on on-campus, traditional-age students (Astin, 1984,

1985, 1999; Tinto, 1975, 1993, 1997). The results of this study clearly indicated that
178
more opportunities for interpersonal connections need to be fostered and offered in online

courses.

Schlossberg (1989) states that adult students in transition often feel marginalized.

They grapple with questions of whether or not they belong, what their new roles will be

like, and what their new lives will be. The women in this study expressed that they

experienced tremendous insecurities and self-doubt entering or re-entering college while

balancing work, family, and childcare responsibilities. They found themselves in a very

vulnerable and transitional point in life.

The participants of this study longed for a personal connection with their

postsecondary institution and the people who worked there. Echoing the research of

Rendon Linares & Munoz, 2011, p. 11), the participants said they needed both types of

validation: academic and interpersonal. Nina made it clear that her reason for dropping

out of the public college was because she felt lost and unconnected. She then found a

personal connection with the people who worked at the for-profit institution, and those

relationships are what helped her stay motivated to complete her degree. Other

participants expressed the desire for belonging and understanding as well. Dawn

suggested that institutions organize study groups or clubs where mothers could get help

with online courses or talk about ways to overcome challenges in their busy lives. This

type of support helped Sara; she said that the study group she formed during her master’s

degree helped her stay motivated not only because of the academic support but because

of the personal support and interactions.

Many academic policies were written for a student population for whom college

was the only priority. Issues surrounding deadlines, penalties, and fees, should take into
179
account students who are older, working, and parenting. Why do students have to master

Algebra in 16 weeks? Why can’t a student take Algebra modules at his or her own speed?

What matters is that the objectives are met, not the timeframe.

Recommendations

The first and most general recommendation for postsecondary educators is to

spend time and resources studying current research on non-traditional students, student

mothers, online students, and women. In addition, I recommend that institutions and

systems conduct qualitative and quantitative research on their own student populations in

order to get a good sense of what their own students need and want. In a highly

competitive postsecondary marketplace, it is imperative that colleges and universities

understand their demographic populations, what they desire to learn, and what they need

in order to complete and graduate successfully. In my experience conducting this study, I

found that student mothers in online bachelor’s degree programs are eager to share what

they know. They enjoy telling their stories, and offering advice that might help

institutions better serve women like themselves. In essence, the participants in this study

expressed a strong desire to be understood and that their unique voices, struggles, and

successes mattered.

Recommendations for Policy Makers

Institutions of higher education can find ways advertised to help mothers and

other non-traditional students feel understood and welcomed. Just as marketers make an

effort to target a variety of consumer populations or create advertising reflecting diverse

student populations, colleges and universities need to reflect on and respond to the high

demographic presence of mothers in online programs. The mothers in this study had a
180
deep desire to matter, to be welcomed, to know that they belonged there or feel validated

(Terenzini et al., 1994), and to feel that their instructors and advisors cared about them

and their kids and lives.

Examples such as the Arizona Women’s Education and Employment and Helping

Hands for Single Moms organizations, found in Arizona, provide financial and

counseling support for mothers who attend community colleges. Collaboration among

community service organization, churches, businesses, and colleges makes this outreach

available to mothers who need assistance and support so that they can be academically

successful. Many institutions, such as City Colleges of Chicago and United Tribes

Technical College, operate Child Development Centers so that parents can attend classes

without worrying about child care. While these ideas are aimed at students who take

college courses on a college campus, the concepts and ideas can be translated and applied

to online student services and organizations for mothers in online degree programs. For

example, Charter Oak State College in Connecticut has a Women in Transition program

that pays for laptops, internet, books, and counseling for low-income, working mothers

who want to finish their degrees online. Proven retention and completion models can be

adapted for mothers and other non-traditional students in online programs.

Recommendations for Enrollment Services

Enrollment personnel are usually the first folks a student encounters at an

institution. They are some of the most important people for establishing a good rapport

with mothers. As Sara asserted, “Enrollment is kind of your ambassador of first

impressions and if they blow it, it’s hard to get beyond that.” The women in this study

181
shared their experiences and offered suggestions on how enrollment services could

improve for the benefit of others.

From the interview data, it is clear that many of the women in this study were not

informed about the reality of doing online courses while juggling multiple roles such as

parenting and employee. For Dawn and Mary, technology and the online course platform

were a challenge. In addition, Angela, Nina, Sara, Beth, and Mary said that they did not

fully understand that student loans were limited or how they would pay the loans back.

It is important that enrollment and financial aid personnel take the time to explain

or demonstrate exactly what the student is signing up for. Students should be asked to

take a demo course to practice using the online course platform before having to perform

in an actual credit course. Institutions need to consider developing and requiring an

online orientation program for all new online students—a student retention strategy

discussed in the literature in chapter two (LaPaluda, 2003; Raphel, 2006; Shea &

Armitage, 2002). Technology and software issues need to be discussed, and students

who are unable to meet minimum computer competency should be either trained or

disallowed to attend classes online. Students should be comfortable and competent so that

they are able to concentrate on learning. In addition, financial aid caps, student loan rates,

and repayment options should be clearly explained. Financial literacy courses should be

required so that students do not overextend themselves financially and end up with

unmanageable debt. Institutions need to offer a mandatory financial aid advising session

for all new recipients along with ongoing financial aid and financial literacy workshops.

Summer, Nina and Cammie said that they would like to continue with their education but

182
can’t because they used up all of their financial aid and were unaware of these

regulations.

Recommendations for Academic Advisors

The participants talked about what they wished college personnel would do

differently to help more mothers succeed in online bachelor’s degree programs. To the

women in this study, college advisors were seen as a person who should be helpful and

concerned with the best interest of the student. Sherrie explained what a good online

student advisor meant to her: “The advisor should be there when I need her and would

help with anything that I need. She would proctor exams for me and basically just [be]

there for any questions or concerns or issues that I might have.”

Advisors and other student support personnel should take adequate time to help

students make informed choices about courses as well as to talk about non-academic

issues that could affect success and retention. Beth wished that advisors would spend

more time talking with the students so that they understood exactly what the student

wanted and needed. Sherrie said, “I think talking to them about what their long-term

goals are, because even if they’re family focused, usually the way to meet them is

through education and so if you can talk to them about what means the most to them and

what they’d really like to accomplish and make them see that through an education they

will reach that. They’re going to be more likely to start and more likely to finish.”

A 2010 article by Kanter, current U.S. Under Secretary of Education and a former

chancellor and vice president of student affairs, stressed the importance of innovations in

student services so that busy students with home and work responsibilities could access

the help and support they need to be successful. Kanter suggested tailoring advising and
183
tutoring to meet student needs, to become more visible and integrated into classroom

instruction, and to utilize technology to reach students who would otherwise not have

time to come to campus and visit (p. 19). Kanter (2010) wrote,

I share the animated premise of student affairs counselors and academic

advisors that special connections with teachers or mentors transform the
lives of students. Countless times in my career I’ve seen that students need
someone to believe in them, whether it is a professor, a coach, or student
advisor. Developing that one-on-one connection is the necessary
prerequisite to providing effective support and building students’ sense of
social and academic integration with their post-secondary institution. Yet,
I would add that caring is not enough. What we need is Caring Plus. In
student affairs, the ultimate formula for student retention is not just
building a sense of connection, but rather providing that one-on-one care,
plus well-tailored, evidence-based, active support. (p. 20)

Recommendations for Faculty

The participants all expressed a desire to learn in an environment that was flexible

and where they were understood. College faculty are the folks who have the most contact

and exert the most control over a student’s college experience. Participants expressed a

desire to learn from online faculty who liked teaching in the online environment and

understand the unique experience of mothers who are online learners. Faculty could

allow Participants also desired to have more communication and interaction with faculty

and other students. That being said, rigid synchronous participation in online lectures is

not the answer. Creating an online version of in-class inflexibility is not a solution.

Faculty teaching in online environments need to tailor teaching best practice, innovative

technology, and personal interaction to the needs of students.

Recommendations for Online Education Leaders and Developers

Mothers in online courses want more personal and meaningful interaction with

other students and faculty. Online courses should look and feel much more like the
184
technology that students use in their daily life. Students are accustomed to touch screens,

video streaming, and instant response; learning management systems lack those features.

At the time of this study, most learning platforms are text heavy and function largely as

drop boxes for written work. Students want more ability to learn at a distance, and that

means that mobile and distance learning technology needs to be developed and updated

continuously.

Participants desired more social interaction within their online courses, and so

learning management systems need to integrate more social media. Research by Cadima,

Ojeda, and Monguet (2010), Park, Kee, and Velenzuela 2009, and Paul, Baker, and

Cochran (2012) found a positive effect of social media on online retention, and the

women in this study longed for more connection with instructors and fellow classmates.

Photos, chat functions, video, and picture sharing should be essential components of the

online course environment. Billions of people subscribe to Facebook and LinkedIn.

While some of the large for-profits, like University of Phoenix, have developed an online

student lounge and student services websites, others have integrated interactive video

web conferencing and chat services. Online students desire to be part of a community of

learners. The mothers in this study wanted their faculty to know them; they wanted to

know more about their faculty members. Creating more opportunity for interaction will

make online learning environments more friendly and attractive.

In addition to improving the look and feel of online courses, distance education

leaders need to move toward individualization of the online learning experience. This

may help students, like those who participated in this study, feel as though their

individual needs are understood and met. Adaptive learning “is the use of data-driven
185
tools to design coursework that responds to individual students’ abilities” (Fain, 2013,

para. 2). Companies like Pearson have developed Knewton technology that “consolidates

data science, statistics, psychometrics, content graphing, machine learning, tagging, and

infrastructure in one place in order to enable personalization at massive scale” (Knewton,

2013). For-profits like Career Education Corp. and others are already launching “Courses

featuring adaptive technology typically use assessments to constantly adjust content,

giving students extra help to master concepts or to skip ones they already understand”

(Fain, 2013, para. 2). While specific technologies will continue to be developed, it is

important that online leaders stay current in recent developments in order to choose the

best technologies to fit their institutional goals as well as meet the market demands of a

highly-progressive student population.

Recommendations for Further Research

The four approaches to motherhood identified through this research study are a

possible starting point for further investigation. The four ways of mothering in this study

are: a) Mother Only Approach, b) Life Balance Approach, c) Reluctant Approach, and d)

Beyond Motherhood Approach. While my research did include motherhood and women’s

identity, it was not the primary focus of my research. Focused and continued qualitative

research in the area of motherhood identity and approach should be conducted.

It is possible that over time, the ways of mothering approaches will change,

expand, retract, and evolve with societal expectations and role changes for women. For

example, the Life Balance Approach may not have been a category for mothers in

centuries past because attending college and careers were not available options for most

186
women. Women did not have the opportunity to attempt to find balance among multiple

roles; their roles as wives and mothers were set for them. In the future, other approaches

to motherhood may emerge to cope with the changes in societal expectations. For

educators to truly understand student mothers and provide proper educational services to

help them succeed and graduate, it is important for college educators to understand the

ways in which women identify their diverse life roles and how they approach the very

important work of raising their offspring.

Another topic that can be potentially developed from this study concerns general

online retention. Beyond overall online retention studies, however, focused research will

continue to be conducted to understand the unique needs of student mothers and other

large or evolving college student subpopulations. For institutions interested in raising

their overall retention numbers, finding the key to the retention of a large group of similar

students can make a big difference in overall retention. This study focused on mothers

because according to a 2011 national Noel-Levitz (2011a) report of online learners,

gender divisions in online programs were 67% female and 33% male and population

projections to 2013 indicated that women’s undergraduate enrollment will increase to 8.9

million or 57 percent of the undergraduate population” (Peter & Horn, 2005, p. iii).

Student success is good for individuals, institutions, employers, and society. In order to

reach the aggressive goal of 55% more Americans earning a college degree by 2025,

researchers, educators, and policy makers will have to conduct meaningful research and

plan strategically.

187
 Final Reflections on the Study

The twelve women who participated in this study richly described their

experiences as mothers in online bachelor’s degree programs and gave their advice and

ideas on how college and university personnel could help more women like themselves

persist and graduate. It is my hope that through this work, more mothers will feel

empowered, and will in turn, empower other women to pursue their educational dreams.

As a mother in an online doctoral program, I identified with the study

participants. Through the dissertation process, I had the opportunity to reflect on my own

experience balancing multiple roles as mother, online student, wife, employee, daughter,

sister, and friend. I’ve learned that I am strong, that I can overcome tremendous

obstacles, and that my experience and the experiences of other student mothers can serve

to inspire women to embark upon and complete their own educational journeys. It is my

hope that institutions of higher education will use this research to create programs and

online learning environments where more mothers can thrive, learn, and achieve their

dreams.

I felt honored to have the opportunity to share the stories of other women, who

like me, overcame great obstacles to achieve their educational dreams. The women in this

study were just as interested in helping other women succeed as I am. And through this

study, we formed a kinship of feminine solidarity, a humbling confession of our

imperfections as mothers, partners, students, people and the raging pride of being able to

say that despite all that, we were victorious. The poem, below, by North Dakota poet

Elizabeth Wilcox Beasley urges the utmost care in portraying a mother, and I share it

here as a final poem because of its guiding plea.

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A Pioneer-Mother Memorial

O sculptor, carve her not with toilworn hands,

With sagging frame and lined and weathered brow;
But carve her as triumphantly she stands
Grasping the handles of the breaking-plow
With her first furrow turned. The wind that sways
The prairie roses blooming at her feet
Ruffles her curls and stealthily betrays
Lithe limbs with youth and loveliness replete.
Hers is the triumphant poise, the fluid grace,
A sculptor once immortalized in stone
In the Winged Victory of Samothrace
Whose high and dauntless spirit is her own.
She scans her wavering furrow pridefully
And sees the prairie tamed; its ample breast
Nurturing flesh of her flesh. Eagerly
She turns to her hard task, resolved to wrest
From the vast plain its proud supremacy.
Carve her thus, sculptor, ere that conflict mars
Her bloom, before the prairie leaves its trace,
While her soul feels its kinship with the stars
And youth’s white flame is in her fearless face.

189
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Williams, J. (2000, December 15). What stymies women’s academic careers? It’s

personal. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved on July 30, 2012 from

http://chronicle.com.libweb.ben.edu/article/What-Stymies-Womens-

Academic/31404/

Winne, P. H., & Hadwin, A. F. (1998). Studying as self-regulated learning. In D. J.

Hacker, J. Dunlosky, & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Metacognition in educational

theory and practice (pp. 277–304). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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Woodley, A. (2004). Conceptualizing student dropout in part-time distance education:

Pathologizing the normal? Open Learning, 9(1), 47–63.

Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Attaining self-regulation: A social cognitive perspective. In M.

Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp.

13–39). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Zusman, A. (2005). Challenges facing higher education in the twenty-first century. In P.

Altbach, R. O. Berdahl, & P. J. Gumport (Eds.), American higher education in the

twenty-first century. (pp. 115–160). Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins

University Press.

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 APPENDIX A:

DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEY

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 Demographic Survey

The purpose of this survey is to obtain background information about participants

in the study. Each participant will be provided a secure code to protect her anonymity.

None of this information will be directly identifiable except through the participant code

assigned by the researcher.

Background/biographical information:

1. Number and ages of children?

2. Marital status?

3. Socioeconomic Status?

4. Ethnic/racial background?

5. Educational Degrees? Where attended? Private or public? When attended? Nature of

the online program?

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 APPENDIX B:

INTERVIEW GUIDE

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 Interview Guide

1. When did you first determine you would go on to college, and what were your
thoughts about attending?
2. Why did When did you first determine you would go on to college, and what were
your thoughts about attending?
3. Why did you choose a degree that is all online?
4. Talk a little about how you view your identity or sense of self—as a human being,
as a woman, and as a mother.
5. Talk a little about what being a mother and motherhood means to you.
6. I asked you to complete some demographic information prior to the interview.
How have these factors (age, marital status, economic and ethnic/racial
background) impacted you and your pursuit of your online bachelor’s degree?
7. What challenges did you face enrolling in college and completing your online
degree, and which ones did you perceive as major barriers?
8. How did being a mother impact your ability to complete your degree?
9. What do you see as the challenges of doing an online degree compared to a
traditional in-class degree?
10. Were there particular people who you feel made a difference in your ability to
complete your degree online? Who are those people and what did they do to help
you?
11. Were there services offered at the college/university that you feel helped you be
successful?
12. What personal strengths or attributes do you feel you possess? How did you
overcome the barriers you faced on your journey to degree completion?
13. Were there particular strategies or methods of studying or schedule that you
employed to help you complete your homework?
14. Think about your experience being a mother and an online student. I would like
for you to use the metaphor of a garden or tree as you think about your time
mothering, learning, overcoming obstacles, and achieving your goals. Describe
what your garden or tree might have looked like, what things impeded its growth,
and the things that contributed to its beauty and development.
15. What advice would you share with mothers who are thinking about starting an
online degree or are currently enrolled in an online degree program?
16. What advice would you give college and university administrators and faculty?
How can they help women like you succeed and graduate?
17. Is there anything about you that I haven’t asked that would be important to
include in your experience of being a mother and online student?
18. Why did you choose a degree that is all online?
19. Talk a little about how you view your identity or sense of self—as a human being,
as a woman, and as a mother.
20. Talk a little about what being a mother and motherhood means to you.

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21. I asked you to complete some demographic information prior to the interview.
How have these factors (age, marital status, economic and ethnic/racial
background) impacted you and your pursuit of your online bachelor’s degree?
22. What challenges did you face enrolling in college and completing your online
degree, and which ones did you perceive as major barriers?
23. How did being a mother impact your ability to complete your degree?
24. What do you see as the challenges of doing an online degree compared to a
traditional in-class degree?
25. Were there particular people who you feel made a difference in your ability to
complete your degree online? Who are those people and what did they do to help
you?
26. Were there services offered at the college/university that you feel helped you be
successful?
27. What personal strengths or attributes do you feel you possess? How did you
overcome the barriers you faced on your journey to degree completion?
28. Were there particular strategies or methods of studying or schedule that you
employed to help you complete your homework?
29. Think about your experience being a mother and an online student. I would like
for you to use the metaphor of a garden or tree as you think about your time
mothering, learning, overcoming obstacles, and achieving your goals. Describe
what your garden or tree might have looked like, what things impeded its growth,
and the things that contributed to its beauty and development.
30. What advice would you share with mothers who are thinking about starting an
online degree or are currently enrolled in an online degree program?
31. What advice would you give college and university administrators and faculty?
How can they help women like you succeed and graduate?
32. Is there anything about you that I haven’t asked that would be important to
include in your experience of being a mother and online student?

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 APPENDIX C:

INFORMED CONSENT FORM

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 Informed Consent Form

Dear prospective participant:

You are invited to be part of the study, Student Mothers Graduating from Online

Degree Programs, conducted by Tanya M. Spilovoy, a doctoral candidate in the Higher

Education and Organizational Change (HEOC) program at Benedictine University. The

purpose is to study the experiences of mothers graduating from online degree programs.

I seek to address the following research questions: 1) What is it like to be a college

student mother pursuing an online degree program? 2) What factors are essential to the

success, retention and degree completion of student mothers?

Your participation in this study is strictly voluntary and you can withdraw from it

at any time with no penalty to you. The study does not have any known or potential

risks. You are invited to participate in an individual interview, which will last

approximately 1½ to 2 hours at a location of your choice. You will be asked to respond

to a series of questions pertaining to the research purposes. Follow-up contact or

interviews may be requested depending on research needs. The interview will be audio-

recorded and transcribed. The transcription of an interview will be presented to you for

verification of accuracy.

For confidentiality purposes, the interview transcripts and all files pertaining to

your participation in this study will be stored in a locked cabinet for seven years and

destroyed afterwards if no longer needed. All computer files will be kept on a secure

server. I will also maintain a copy of the data on a password-protected computer. Only I

as the principal researcher will know your actual name. The interview will be given a

secure code and a pseudonym will be assigned to your name to keep all the information
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fully confidential. Excerpts from the interview may be included in the final dissertation

report or other later publications. However, under no circumstances will your name or

identifying characteristics appear in these writings. If, at a subsequent date, biographical

data were relevant to a publication, a separate release form would be sent to you.

The Institutional Review Board at Benedictine University has approved this

study. The Chair of the IRB is Dr. Alandra Weller-Clarke. This study is being conducted

in part to fulfill requirements for my Ed.D. degree in Higher Education and

Organizational Change at Benedictine University in Lisle, IL. I would appreciate it if

you would sign this form on the line provided below to show that you have read and

agree with the contents.

If you have questions regarding this study, please feel free to contact me at

Tanya.spilovoy@gmail.com or my dissertation director, Dr. Nancy Bentley at

Nancywbentley@yahoo.com.

You will be provided a copy of your signed consent form. Please acknowledge

with your signatures below your consent to participate in this study and to record your

interview. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Tanya M. Spilovoy

I consent to participate in this study

Name: Date:

____________________________ __________________

[Signature]

I give my permission to record this interview

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Name: Date:

____________________________ ___________________

[Signature]

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 APPENDIX D:

MOTHERING WHILE COMPLETING AN ONLINE DOCTORAL PROGRAM

REFLECTION

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 As a doctoral student and mother in an online Ed. D. program, I encountered my

own challenges and rewards. I began my doctoral program when my daughter, Ruby, was

only two months old; Dakota, my son, was three and a half. Rarely did I read a journal

article without my baby in my arms. I remember cradling and nursing Ruby with one

arm, and holding a textbook with the other. Ruby thinks that every mother does

homework because it is all she’s ever known. Dakota, however, understands that his mom

is doing something different than other mothers.

Many nights when I was up late studying and writing, I would hear Dakota sneak

out of bed and tiptoe into the kitchen to lurk while I was working at the table. When I

would tell him to go back to bed, Dakota would say, “I want to know what you’re

learning. Will you read it to me? I like to learn important things too.” So sat him on my

lap and held him while I read a few paragraphs aloud. He asked a few questions, kissed

my cheek, and went back to his bed. From then on, if I saw that Dakota was really

curious about what I was doing, I stopped and showed him what I was working on.

Even when this doctoral program seemed impossible, I knew that I had to succeed

so that my children would understand the importance of education. I knew that if I

finished my doctorate, they’d have a better life. I wanted my children to look up to me in

the same way I had looked up to my mother.

My mother Gail was the first person in her family to complete a bachelor’s

degree. Her parents were not supportive of their daughter going to college; girls were

supposed to get married, make a nice home, and have babies. She went to college anyway

-- while working and mothering me and my sister Jessica. As a second-grader, I figured

out that if I wanted to spend time with my mom, I could offer to help her study. We
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would sit together on her bed, and I would quiz her based on her notes in Sociology, Art

History, Psychology, Math, and English. That is how I learned to read cursive. And years

later, as I was sitting in a Sociology course my freshman year in college, I realized that I

knew most of the material because I had already studied Sociology at age 8 with my

mother. She wore a red dress to her college graduation. I wanted to be just like her.

When I began my dissertation, I told my children that I was writing a book. Eager

to do the same, Dakota began writing and illustrating his own books prolifically. One

day, Dakota announced that when I was finished writing my book, he would draw the

illustrations. I told him that sounded like a great idea, thinking that he would forget. But a

year later, as I was finishing my final edits, Dakota reminded me about the illustrations.

He again sat on my lap (which isn’t easy, now that he is a big seven year-old), and we

talked about what it is like to have a mommy who is in college. I asked him to draw what

it looks and feels like so that other people would understand. He sat down and

thoughtfully drew the picture found in Appendix E.

Dakota’s illustration captures the essence of my dissertation topic, mothers in

online bachelor’s degree programs, through the eyes of a child. The scene he drew is

loving and messy. In the picture, I’m sitting at the table with my laptop and books open.

Dakota is standing close, peering at my work, and Ruby is standing nearby playing with a

toy on the table. Scott, my husband, is in the background playing a video game. The cats

are wrestling. There are papers and toys, crayons, and a half-eaten apple strewn about. In

the drawing, the children are an integral part of the learning process because they are

curious. They want to be physically and emotionally close to their mother, and so, in their

own way, they experience what it is like to have a mother who is also an online student.
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 I am looking forward to the next phase of life -- a life free of doctoral coursework

and dissertation writing, because I will have more time to spend with my children doing

fun and loving things. But I am also glad that Ruby and Dakota had the chance to see me

struggle through my education. I’m glad they witnessed my fortitude and frustration. I’m

grateful they know the sacrifice and dedication it takes to achieve and learn and succeed.

My hope is that my children will someday carve their own paths, overcome their own

barriers, and achieve their biggest dreams.

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 APPENDIX E:

MOTHERING WHILE COMPLETING AN ONLINE DEGREE PROGRAM

DRAWING BY DAKOTA SKY SKARO

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228
 APPENDIX F:

PRAIRIE POET AND COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES

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 Alice Sinclair Page

Alice Sinclair Page was born in St. Charles, Missouri in 1871. In 1885, she moved

with her family to Dakota Territory and homesteaded in Towner County near Cando. In

1891, she married Elisha Bartlette Page and lived on his homestead near Leds, S. D., until

1901. In that year, they moved into Leeds, where Alice became a director in their banking

firm. Alice was a charter member of the North Dakota Poetry Society. Some of her

poems are contained in “North Dakota Singing,” the first poetry anthology published in

the state. One poem, “Wisp of Smoke,” is preserved in the poetry shrine founded and

maintained by the State Poetry Society in the Capitol building. Her verses have been

published in a variety of magazines and anthologies.

Tracy Price

Tracy Price is a writer and poet. She currently lives in Bismarck, North Dakota,

with her husband and two children. She spent ten years living in the forests of northern

Minnesota but was drawn back to her hometown; as birth places are want to do, in 2007.

She began writing upon her return to North Dakota, drawing most of her inspiration from

her backyard view of the limitless horizons of the state, its weather and the culture. The

people that come into and exit her life are especially influential to her poetry and prose.

She writes from a sensual and emotional perspective intending to impart her feelings

upon her readers. Tracy has been published in her local newspaper and state reader-

driven online news journal.

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 Tom Porter

Tom Porter is a native of Mandan, North Dakota, son of Ken and Pat Porter. He

graduated with honors from the University of Mary, DePaul University in Chicago, the

University of Notre Dame, and the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri-

Kansas City, where he earned a Doctorate in Musical Arts in Choral Conducting. Porter

is currently a Professor of Music and the Chair of the Music Department at the University

of Mary where he has taught since 2008. His choirs have performed for state and regional

conferences as well as toured regionally and internationally, including performances at

Carnegie Hall, St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice and St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine

Chapel in Rome.

An avid composer, Porter has written a variety of compositions from classical

solos to commercial jingles, from orchestral overtures to church hymns. Presently, his

compositional efforts are focused on choral music, both secular and sacred, and often

feature lyrics that promote an appreciation for North Dakota’s cultural heritage including

Prairie Sketches for solo piano, Songs of the Prairies for choir and piano with texts by

North Dakota pioneer women; a set of American folksongs for women’s choir, violin,

and piano; and A Prairie Storm, commissioned by the Grand Forks Master Chorale. He

has written commissioned pieces for the North Dakota Music Teachers’ Association,

Bismarck-Mandan Civic Chorus, National Association of Pastoral Musicians, San

Francisco Girls Chorus, Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra, Missouri Valley

Chamber Orchestra, Central Dakota Children’s Choir, and high school and church choirs

across the region. He also contributed to the soundtracks of two documentaries by North

Dakota Public Broadcasting, Prairie Churches and Homesteading.

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 David Bouchard

David Bouchard is a writer, speaker, and educator. He has written more than

fourteen books for children, including the classic If You're Not from the Prairie (1998).

He is a popular and successful public speaker who travels and talks to educators, parents

and children about books and the importance of literacy and reading. Bouchard draws

from the stories and traditions of his Metis Heritage to build bridges of understanding

between the First Nations peoples and the rest of North America.

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APPENDIX G:

PLAINS PROSE

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Monday, October 17, 2011
...just thinking out loud by T.L. Price
Retrieved from PlainsProse Blog http://www.plainsprose.blogspot.com/

It is a crisp, breezy autumn morning. So minutely breezy the North Dakota weatherman
doesn’t bother to mention the fact out loud.

I remember living in Minnesota. The meteorologists would predict the lightest winds
down to the oddest ranges for the day…“a northerly wind measuring between 3-6 mph.”
They were so serious about it. I shook my head and laughed every time. Maybe you
have to be from NoDak to understand the absurdity of this.

The local environmental climate influences the person. The culture of a place makes the
person. The people make the culture. The climate makes the culture? I say, true.

North Dakotans are hard-nosed people. To a fault at times. We can endure long winters
and droughts. We can endure stifling situations in our personal lives. We don’t let a
blizzard or a thunderstorm keep us from doing what needs to get done, like going to
work, buying groceries, etc. We don’t let a little wrench thrown amongst our daily plans
to keep us from completing our tasks. Why...perhaps we understand everything comes to
a natural end? Every season comes to a close, the next one starts anew.

We live amid the weather. The weather lives in us.

If you are unable to allow the forces of nature into your heart and soul and allow its
influence to affect you, North Dakota isn’t for you...because in this place, she will not let
you ignore her.

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 APPENDIX H:

NORTH DAKOTA PRAIRIES

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 VITA

Tanya Marie Spilovoy was born in Minot, North Dakota, the daughter of Daniel

and Gail Spilovoy. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English Writing and Speaking from

Union College, in Lincoln, Nebraska, but spent her sophomore year traveling Europe and

Africa while studying abroad at Newbold College in England. After college, Tanya

moved to Beijing, PR China where she traveled and taught English at the Beijing

Chemical University. Upon her return to the U.S., Tanya earned her Masters of Education

and English as a Second Language teaching certificate from Hamline University in St.

Paul, MN. Tanya’s work experience includes teaching and leadership roles. She taught

English as a Second Language k-12 for St. Paul Public Schools, served as English faculty

at Macalester College, United Tribes Technical College, and Bismarck State College.

Tanya also worked as the Academic Dean and later Dean of Students at Rasmussen

College. She graduated with her doctorate in Higher Education Leadership and

Organizational Change from Benedictine University in 2013. Tanya is currently the

Director of Online Education and State Authorization for the North Dakota University

System.

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