To best serve online first-year students, universities need to develop systems to narrow the transactional distance, include just-in-time interventions, and provide solid and timely feedback. Live learning is one strategy that provides a space for faculty and students to meet (narrow transactional distance), to develop foundations skills (in time interventions) and ask questions in real time about important concepts. Recently, live learning sessions initiative has been added as a requirement in some general education courses at UAGC. Presently, university collected data show a significant difference between students who attend the required live learning sessions and those who do not attend in successful course completion and next course progression. However, there is a need to assess and track the difference between students who watch the live learning recording and those who attend live sessions to better understand of the impact of the live learning initiative at UAGC. The problem is that the lack of tracking students who watch the recording leaves a gap in the full understanding of the impact of this initiative. Since students who watch the recordings do not attend the live sessions, the question is whether these students are meeting the university definitions of persistence and retention. The purpose of this study is to examine students' perception of live learning components and its impact on their interaction and understanding of course subject matter as well as the impact of watching recorded sessions as opposed to attending live sessions on student persistence and retention in GEN101 and GEN103.