Lifelong Learning Starts Now: 5 Strategies to Retaining Online College Students

Fall is always a time of excitement for me. Since I was a student for almost 20 years, and have spent so much of my professional life in education, fall always feels like the start of something new. The potential for greatness is right there in the start of a new school year, and a lot of effort is spent getting students started in their online program.

But once those students have started, it’s time to think about how to help them stay in school and complete their degree. After all, it’s easy to start something. How many of us have started a diet or exercise program with every intention of making it a lifestyle change, only to slip back into old habits quickly? Sticking with something, especially something as demanding as an online college degree program, requires extra support. I spoke with Mike Tyree, Director of Institutional Effectiveness here at Learning House, about some of the ways we work with students to help them make the most of their online program.

Step 1: Enroll for Success

Retaining students starts with enrolling the right students to begin with. Good prep work on the front end can help set students up for success in the long run, by helping ensure the student understands the expectations of the program and is prepared for the rigor of the work. Some of the ways an enrollment team can facilitate long-term success include:

• Setting realistic expectations. While it is tempting to say whatever it takes to get a student to enroll, this is counterproductive to long-term success. Instead, being honest with potential students with the time needed to commit to the coursework will help these students make realistic choices and rearrange their schedules.
• Connect students with relevant financial aid resources. Tuition planners are a big help in this endeavor, as they can work with students to help them understand the financial commitment. This is frequently the area where students have the most concerns, so connecting them with a personal tuition planner can help ease their mind and enable them to make smart financial choices.
• Virtually walk students to class. Fear of the unknown or confusion around technology can keep students from even beginning the work needed to take an online class. Ensuring they have a basic understanding of the Learning Management System (LMS) your university is using and that they can access relevant online campus portals will ease concerns and help them overcome any technology hurdles.

Step 2: Use Proactive Retention Outreach Based on Risk Factors

All students enter their online programs with a variety of risk factors, which can include family and career commitments; lack of experience in the classroom and/or lack of online experience; unclear academic, professional, or personal goals; financial hardships; poor personal health or poor health of close family members and poor time management skills.

Typically, the more risk factors a student has, the more likely it is that the student will not complete the degree. Monitoring these risk factors through objective observance of performance (or lack thereof) within the online classroom and subjective interactions with the student can help mitigate these effects. The retention team can then adjust outreach strategies and help troubleshoot some of these issues. A student who has children and has never enrolled in an online program before, for example, may need to be contacted every other day to ensure he or she is staying on top of assignments and is understanding how to use the LMS. A student who has unclear professional goals may need less frequent check-ins, but longer conversations that help get at the heart of why pursing a degree is a good idea. Every student is different, and outreach should be tailored to the specific needs of that student. This will help students find the answers they need in a way that makes sense for their lives.

Step 3: Create An Engaging Online Learning Experience and Community

There are three key components to creating an engaging and effective experience. First, consider your classroom experience. If students do not have good experiences in their online classrooms or if they do not feel the material they are being exposed to is relevant to their lives and goals, it can be difficult to retain them as students. Ultimately your classroom experience is your product, and if your customers (the students) are dissatisfied, they will not continue to purchase. Having quality controls in place and making quality a priority, along with regular evaluation of instructor effectiveness, are critical tools to ensuring a good experience for students.

Second, make sure there are navigable degree paths for students. Typically, online students are goal oriented; many of them are finishing a degree they started years before, and they are going to school for a reason, whether it’s to earn a promotion, enter into a different field, or increase their earning potential. These students want a clear path to finishing their degree, knowing what classes they need to take and when. Having clear course maps, advisors to help students understand the maps and courses available when students need them are all key components to making students feel like their degree is achievable and worth pursuing.

Finally, consider offering white-glove student service. To stay motivated, students need to feel connected to their programs/institutions. Providing excellent student service helps foster these feelings of connectedness. By setting expectations for reasonable but rapid response times from faculty, advisors, financial aid counselors, and business office personnel and by making additional student services (such as tutoring or career guidance) available to online students, institutions can help facilitate these feelings of connectedness.

Step 4: Maintain Contact With Students Who Are Taking Time Away From Online Programs

For a variety of reasons (often but not always related to the risk factors discussed above) students will sit out for a particular term during their degree programs. It is important to maintain regular contact with these students so they feel comfortable and confident re-entering the program. There may be practical issues that need to be resolved before re-engaging with the program, such as understanding degree maps or how their completion time is adjusted after the time away. More frequently, there are psychological barriers that need to be overcome, as the longer students stay away, the harder it is for them to get started again. Having an engaged outreach policy to continue to help these students feel like a part of the community can overcome this barrier.

Step 5: Evaluate Performance and Make Adjustments

Continuous improvement is possible, thanks to data. If your institution is tracking appropriately, you can see where pain points are and work to improve them. Some measures of success include:

• Course completion rates
• Course offerings and enrollment numbers
• Course evaluations
• Admissions data
• Transfer rates

This data can be used to evaluate a number of things, depending on what your institution wants to improve. Some examples include:

• Whether course sequencing has an impact on success rates if students are navigating their programs using different paths
• If some student populations may need additional support based on characteristics they displayed at the time of admission and drop rates for those student populations
• If some faculty and/or courses tend to perform better on standard outcomes than others
• Where students who leave the institution may be going
• If there are enough planned seats to accommodate students in the courses they need for their degrees

Once this information has been obtained and evaluated, a plan of action can be developed. Institutions might:

• Design an optimal degree path/sequence
• Create interventions (such as courses focused on success strategies) for new students who may need additional types of support based on admissions data
• Redesign courses and/or retrain faculty for underperforming courses
• Mirror program offerings or policies of institutions that students may be transferring to
• Create course schedules that will meet the needs of students

Depending on each institution’s goals and the data it collects, plans of action can differ, even among programs. What is true across colleges and universities, though, is that focusing on retention improves graduation rates — a key indicator potential students look at when evaluating what institution they want to attend. The benefits of developing a thoughtful, responsive retention strategy can have ripple effects for years to come, creating a base of loyal alumni who then become brand ambassadors for your school.

How are you working to improve retention? What are some common reasons you see for students dropping out, and what can you do to combat those challenges?