Admissions applications, discussion posts, grades, and activity logs are among the most common signals educators use to gauge whether students will thrive in an online program. But two new Georgia Tech studies suggest those measures tell only part of the story.

One study found that admissions data offers limited insight into long-term academic success. The other challenges assumptions about so-called "lurkers," students who rarely post in online discussions but may still be deeply engaged in their courses. Together, the studies suggest that what matters most for student success may not be the easiest thing to measure.

Presented at the Learning@Scale conference in Seoul, South Korea, the research draws on data from Georgia Tech's Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program, one of the world's largest online degree programs. The program's scale gives researchers access to data from thousands of learners and allows them to identify patterns that would be difficult to detect in smaller educational settings.

Predicting Success

The long-term success study analyzed years of admissions and student performance data to examine whether application materials can predict what happens after a student applies. The research focused on three practical issues that can influence student success: who gets admitted, whether the admitted students matriculate, and who ultimately completes the program. OMSCS has always had a unique admissions model that focuses more on holistically evaluating a student’s background rather than GPAs or GRE scores and does not require applicants to have a strong computer science background or undergraduate education. 

"OMSCS has always followed a different admissions model from basically everyone else in higher education, so we can't draw from prevailing wisdom about what students to admit," said David Joyner, interim vice provost for AI in Education and executive director of online education and OMSCS. "Enough time has passed since we moved to a new admissions system that we finally could step back and look at what factors predicted success."

The researchers found that application materials could reasonably predict admissions and matriculation decisions. But when it came to forecasting retention and long-term success, early-course performance — not application information — played an outsized role in predicting whether students would remain in the program.

"I've always thought that success is most predicted by invisible factors like intended time commitment and external incentive to success," Joyner said. "But I thought there would be some signal in the application data. It's encouraging that there's not."

Learning About Lurking

Another indicator of student success is participation. It's often assumed that students who primarily read discussion forums rather than actively posting in them — sometimes called "lurkers" — are less engaged in their courses. Marjorie Ivy, lead author of the second study on lurkers and a 2025 OMSCS graduate, became interested in the topic through her own online learning experience.

"I've been that student in an online course who reads every discussion thread, thinks deeply about the material, feels genuinely connected to what's happening in the class — and never posts," Ivy said. "That mismatch between what activity logs say about a student and what the student is actually experiencing is what drew me to this topic. I wanted to see if we could give data and language to the quieter forms of engagement that often go unnoticed."

To better understand those students, the researchers looked beyond behavioral data and examined how learners perceived their social experiences in a course. Students completed surveys about belonging, peer interaction, and whether they felt their contributions were acknowledged. Using similarity algorithms and network analysis that examines relationships between different people, the researchers grouped students into clusters of learners who shared similar attitudes about their course experiences. The results revealed that some students who rarely posted still reported feeling connected to their classmates and learning community. 

Looking Beyond the Numbers

Although the studies examine different stages of the student journey, they arrive at a similar conclusion: Visible metrics often miss important parts of the learning experience. Understanding student success may require looking beyond what is easiest to count.

"My biggest hope is this program will signal to other universities how broken our traditional admissions model is," Joyner said. "We should be giving more students the chance to succeed, because higher education is not currently accommodating plenty who can succeed."

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