Hello wonderful people of the education world. I know that it has been a little while since my last entry but here is it. I recently had a conference call with an associate after a webinar regarding online/distance education. The associate asked me if we could schedule a conference call to discuss my suggestions for increasing retention for online courses.
During my conversation with her about a month ago and after some detailed research that I conducted, I came up with the following initiatives for online education and retaining their students. First, it is my innate belief that online courses requires management of self which may result in a student becoming a self-directed learner. An online course requires discipline, focus, and a lot of concentration on behalf of the student. Therefore, the same skills that are learned through online education should carry over to the workforce because recent research has shown that employers are looking for employees who are disciplined, focused, and are able to concentrate on a given task. Employers are also looking for people who are able to meet deadlines in an effective and in an efficient way. Online courses provide this for their students due to the fact that research papers and essays are always due within a week after the assignment is given. This helps students with time management as well.
One of the most important things for online universites and colleges should do is build professional relationships with outside high schools. Developing partnerships with high schools for online education courses while working with their technology department to find out where the strengths and weaknesses are with their students on with preparation for not only the traditional college setting but for the blended classroom experience as well. Research shows that most students drop out of college within their first and second years of attendance. This is contributed to a few factors. One of the contributing factors was the lack of preparation from their high school experience. Some of the other factors could stem from the environment, the climate of the classroom, or from the quality of teaching.
Students who just graduate from high school should go into the traditional classroom where a professor demonstrates, models, interacts, and incorporates their expertise of their content through the use of lectures or other teaching modalities. It is only my recommendation that the online mode or the blended classroom should only be directed towards the master or the doctorate level.
Another suggestion that I provided is the use of more faculty interaction through the use of podcast and video conferencing. From my initial blog, I mentioned how our brains process 40% to 60% of what we visualize and observe. If more online courses provide more of these video conferences and podcast, then it could increase the retention level rather than increase the attrition level for these online courses.
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