the correlation between students’ attitudes and persistence in e-learning

Background: for a long time, “attitude” was considered an effective factor in student-teacher interaction and students’ progress in traditional education. recently, it is studied as a motivational factor in learners’ engagement in distance and e-learning education.objectives: this study tried to find out the correlation between “attitude” and “persistence” in e-learning education.methods: to explore the probable correlation between students’ attitudes and their persistence in e-learning systems a survey was conducted to seek students’ attitudes toward online course, online interaction, and some of e-communication tools, namely online chat, discussion forum, and e-mail. a sample of 744 students was obtained from 5,285 e-learning undergraduate students who were formally accepted to study in online courses at three iranian universities from 2014 to 2017. the instruments were two researcher-made questionnaires for persistent and non-persistent students in e-learning systems.results: findings showed a positive, direct, and significant relationship between students’ persistence and their attitudes toward online course (r = 0.744; p = 0.014) and online interaction (r = 0.863; p = 0.001) in e-learning. also, there was a relationship between students’ attitudes toward online interaction with the frequency of student-professor interaction (r = 0.943, p < 0.001) and the frequency of student-student interaction (r = 0.793, p = 0.006).conclusions: the observed positive and significant relationship between students’ attitudes toward online interaction and persistence showed that students’ persistence can be increased through enhancing student-professor and student-student interactions in e-learning systems.