Online courses provide flexible learning opportunities, but research suggests that students may learn less and persist at lower rates compared to face-to-face settings. However, few studies have investigated more distal effects of online education. In this study, we analyzed 6 years of institutional data for three cohorts of students in 13 large majors (N = 10,572) at a public research university to examine distal effects of online course participation. Using online course offering as an instrumental variable for online course taking, we find that online course taking of major-required courses leads to higher likelihood of successful 4-year graduation and slightly accelerated time-to-degree. These results suggest that offering online courses may help students to more efficiently graduate college.

在线课程提供了灵活的学习机会，但研究表明，与面对面的环境相比，学生可能学得更少，并且坚持的速度也更低。然而，很少有研究调查在线教育的更远期影响。在这项研究中，我们分析了一所公立研究型大学 13 个大专业（N = 10,572）的三组学生的 6 年机构数据，以检查在线课程参与的远期影响。使用在线课程提供作为在线课程学习的工具变量，我们发现在线学习专业必修课程导致成功 4 年毕业的可能性更高，并略微加快了获得学位的时间。这些结果表明，提供在线课程可以帮助学生更有效地从大学毕业。