CAREER TECHNICAL EDUCATION ONLINE VERSUS FACE-TO-FACE

Career and technical education's (CTE) role in preparing tomorrow's workforce to meet the growing demands for middle-skilled workers with industry-valued degrees and certificates is critical to the mission of higher education and a conduit for class mobility for some communities. Given the burgeoning demands of today's workforce and dwindling enrollments, a strategic shift towards online education emerges as a compelling solution, despite educators' concerns regarding perceived discrepancies in student success. This study used an explanatory sequential mixed methods approach, melding quantitative and qualitative data from a community college automotive program and scrutinizing the impacts of in-person and online course delivery modalities on student success. The findings revealed that students in Automotive online (M = 3.35, SD = 1.062) courses had higher average grades than traditional face-to-face students (M = 2.82, SD = 1.221). However, no discernible correlation emerged between the course format and completion or withdrawal rates. A thematic dissection of student experiences identifies pivotal factors driving online learning success: course content, instructional quality, and technology support. In response to these findings, the study outlines crucial strategies such as augmenting online support services like academic counseling, bolstering faculty-student communication through techniques such as virtual office hours, hybrid options, and fine-tuning online course design with hands-on experiences at its core. This study underscores the necessity for additional empirical research in online CTE courses to streamline the transition from hands-on to online skill-building learning.