Retention+Strategies

**Retention: Issue and Strategies**
last edited by Philip Pecorino

Retention is a big issue with distance education and as this program is provided for people who have already withdrawn once from their course of studies it will be a big issue for us to deal with here. Fortunately, it appears as if we are off to a good start with regard to putting into place some structures and mechanism that assist in retention. There is online student assistance available and there will be a good deal of information available about the classes on the website before the start of classes. There are also advisors and counselors available to address student questions. What else might be considered as possibly contributing to retention? In particular what can faculty do in the very design of the classes as well as in their class management that might improve retention? I’ll propose one here. Faculty in this program should insist on some direct communication by telephone or email with each of their students in the first week of the semester and at least once more in the first three weeks to insure that students understand what is expected of them in order for them to succeed in the class. There are a number of things I do at the outset to get folks INTERACTING and to establish the social presence. 6.  Opening Module with simple DB items-low stakes-establish some starting points for all of us .—Phil Pecorino The very first assignment a request to send me an e-mail. But perhaps a second assignment needs to be in place for communication through a different medium -- perhaps a blog posting. –Barbara Walters This may go without saying -- I know it's common practice among the people teaching in this program in the fall -- but it may be worth urging, in addition to Phil's excellent suggestion, that we do all we can early on to cultivate a sense of what the research in online learning calls "social presence."
 * 1) changing the BANNER several times to indicate my presence
 * 2) having them create HOMEPAGES
 * 3) BB DB INTRODUCTIONS
 * 4) BB DB Student Cafe- CHAT ROOM-for anything at all
 * 5) Ice Breaker Module-Orientation and Training
 * Use the DB to set out some learning the navigation exercises and some go fetch important information tasks related to requirements, dates, expectations
 * Have them send an email to the instructor
 * Have them use the Drop Box, etc... to familiarize them with the BB features used and the class site.
 * Use the DB to have students talk about what they expect and what they think at the outset about the site and have them raise their own issues in a Student Lead Discussion DB

The idea behind social presence is that people in fully online courses need to imagine a person and a personality behind the posted text someone puts up. There are all sorts of steps to this end, like encouraging students to post photos on the student homepages Blackboard provides. But the most important steps have to do with getting the students to interact with other students and thus overcome the sense of isolation they might feel while typing at a computer who-knows-where at who-knows-what-hour.

And of these kinds of interaction the most important is the so-called "icebreaker" forum, an initial forum on the Discussion Board where students can introduce themselves, ask questions of one another, and so on. Some folks like to harness this largely social interaction to the objectives of the course -- have student introductions include some reference to their prior knowledge of the course's subject matter, for instance -- but most agree that such forums are indispensable early on.

I'm wondering if people might be willing to say a bit about how they open up discussions in their courses and get the students involved (especially in a way that gets them to know each other) at the outset.---George Otte I also think it is important to email students who are active on the class website during the first few days, thanking them for their participation and encouraging them to continue. After 4-5 days without any activity, I'll email those who have not yet logged in, or whose number of "hits" is very low (according to Bb Statistics) and follow up with phone calls if I don't hear from them within another day or two. My previous experience (confirmed by research) has been that online students who don't become active within the first two weeks do not complete the semester in good standing. However, I should add that sometimes the reason for a student's inactivity had nothing to do with the medium or the student's degree of committment. For example, I have had two students who were severely injured in automobile accidents just prior to the beginning of a semester. – William Bernhardt