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Strategies for IncreasingOnline Student Retention

and Satisfaction.

2 Strategies for Increasing Online Student Retention and Satisfaction. • www.FacultyFocus.com

Strategies for Increasing Online Student Retentionand Satisfaction

Despite the tremendous growth of distance education, retention remains its Achilles’ heel.Estimates of the failed retention rate for distance education undergraduates range from 20to 50 percent. Distance education administrators believe the failed retention rate for onlinecourses may be 10 to 20 percent higher than for face-to-face courses.

As an increasing number of colleges and universities identify online education as a criticalcomponent to their long-term strategy, the issue of retention can no longer be ignored. Itis mandatory for everyone who touches the distance learner to understandwhy these students leave their online courses, and what it will take to keep them there.

Featuring a collection of top articles from Distance Education Report, this new FacultyFocus special report provides practical strategies for improving online student retention,engagement and satisfaction. Articles include:

• 11 Tips for Improving Retention of Distance Learning Students• Understanding the Impact of Attrition on Your School• Taking a Holistic View of Student Retention• Eight Suggestions to Help You Get Your Retention Act Together Now• Online Mentoring Builds Retention• Nine Truths about Recruitment and Retention• Finding Helpful Patterns in Student Engagement

With the strategic importance of distance education courses on the rise, this report willhelp you understand the key variables that impact the retention of your web-basedstudents and adopt proactive strategies proven to mitigate potential retention problems.

Christopher HillEditor

Distance Education Report

3Strategies for Increasing Online Student Retention and Satisfaction. • www.FacultyFocus.com

Table of Contents

11 Tips for Improving Retention of Distance Learning Students ..................................................................................4

Understanding the Impact of Attrition on Your School ............................................................................................5

Taking a Holistic View of Student Retention..............................................................................................................7

Reducing the Risk: Effects of a First Year Experience Course for Non-Traditional Students ......................................8

Eight Suggestions to Help You Get Your Retention Act Together Now......................................................................10

Online Mentoring Builds Retention ........................................................................................................................12

Nine Truths about Recruitment and Retention ........................................................................................................14

Finding Helpful Patterns in Student Engagement ....................................................................................................16

Service Center: A Strategy to Promote Student Retention ........................................................................................18


Retention remains a knottyproblem for distance education.Bob Nash manages instruc-

tional design for Coast LearningSystems, a division of CoastlineCommunity College in FountainValley, California. He proposes thatdistance learning retention is adifficult problem because it is “multi-variant” – there is no single causethat can be addressed by a singlesolution. So instead of a single magicbullet for attrition, he proposes amulti-variant answer – a series of in-terventions that he has designed that,combined, have had measurableresults in increasing student retention.

1. An “early alert” program. If adistance learning student hasn’t beenresponding the first few weeks of thecourse the instructor can pass on thestudent’s name to this automatedsystem. The student then gets an e-mail saying (in Nash’s words) “Heywe haven’t heard from you for awhile – is there anything we can do tohelp you? Here’s some services at theinstitution that might help yousucceed.” The instructor follows upwith a personal phone call or email.“Some of our distance learning

classes are quite large,” Nash says.“Just like a lot of campuses, some ofour largest classes are our entry level– psychology, economics. In the largercourses this automated process is veryhelpful to the instructors who can’tpick up the phone each day and calleach student.”

2. An online tutoring program.Coastline instituted a program thatincluded tutors available both on thephone and online, along with otherstudent success services. “Thosestudent who used it succeeded athigher rates than their peer group,”Nash says.

3. More tutoring. “It’s unlikely thatjust offering online tutoring is goingto put a major dent in the problem,”Nash says. But offering distancelearning tutoring plus offering adistance learning success course, plusthe early alert system, plus makingmany traditional student servicesavailable to online learners isbeginning to create the kind of multi-variant response to the multi-variantproblem that Nash talks about.Successful upperclass majors from

four year colleges were hired toprovide tutoring to Coastline students.Students would enter the programeither by requesting help or on areferral from one of their professors.Students could get their tutoring face-to-face, on the phone, or online.

4. A student success course. “Iwould recommend a student orienta-tion or a student success course,” saysNash. Coastline developed a three-unit student success course, called"Mastering the College Experience,"teaching learning skills, “life skills”and various aspects of college orienta-tion. Enrollments are good and, insurveys, students have reported theyfeel more prepared to succeed afterhaving taken it. ”I’ve been hounding

our research department so that wecould measure the success of thosestudents relative to the students whodid not take the course,” Nash says.Students watch segments on their

local PBS station or they get a videoor DVD copy. They have a studentguide and a textbook that goes alongwith the course, called Becoming aMaster Student. “It’s one of theleading student success textbooks,”Nash says.

5. Learning communities. Nash callsthis the tactic that has produced thebest student retention rates. “Theresearch recommends [learning com-munities] again and again,” saysNash. Coastline’s STAR Program is agroup of cohorts that move through aprogram together. It’s an acceleratedprogram so that students get theirassociate’s degree in eighteen monthsinstead of two years. Classes aresmaller and hybrid-style, split aboutevenly between face-to-face andonline. “Just like the research tell us,it works very well,” says Nash. “Theretention numbers in that group arevery high.” The only drawback is it’snot a scalable solution. To beeffective, class numbers have to bekept down, keeping the cost perstudent high.

6. Peer tutoring. One of Coastline’ssister schools offers a course-specificpeer tutor program. Students who didwell in a course the previous year arehired by an instructor to be a peertutor in the course in the presentterm. The peer tutors help withspecific assignments, answer fre-quently asked questions, and takecare of basic student needs in order tofree up the instructor’s time.

7. Introduction to distance learning.“The first hurdle for distance studentsis technology,” Nash says.Introduction To Distance Learningteaches the means and methodology

11 Tips for Improving Retentionof Distance Learning Students

By Christopher Hill

PAGE 5�

5

If you’re involved in online learning, no doubt you’reaware of attrition. Maybe it’s just a vague feeling thatyou’re losing more people than you should, or perhaps

you’re curious about what a high attrition rate could do toyour reputation or bottom line.Whatever the case, revenue loss from attrition is a very

real issue. Fortunately, there are a number of resources thatwill help provide clarity on issues around student attritionand the impact on your school.According to a study by Vincent Tinto, the retention rate

in the United States between 1880 and 1980 was around55%, which is marginally higher than the rate in othercountries for the same period. The 2001 Consortium forStudent Retention Data Exchange study found the secondyear retention rate of 80% for member institutions, 87% forinstitutions with average SAT scores above 1100, and 69%for institutions with SAT scores below 990. A number ofstudies report that about 50% of students entering two-year

colleges and 30% of students entering four-year collegiateinstitutions leave at the end of their first year.The attrition rates for distance learning programs are

generally 10 to 20 percent higher than the traditional site-based counterparts. Most management has becomeconcerned about the high rate of student attrition and nolonger doubts the significance of retention as a strategicissue. A number of federal, state, and private agenciesrequest institution data on retention -- an indicator of agrowing interest in this issue. The Higher Education Act of1992 mandates all institutions that participate in any federalstudent financial assistance program authorized by Title IVof the Higher Education Act of 1965 to provide retentiondata.Retention data is being used as an indicator of academic

quality in the U.S. News and World Report annual college

of distance learning and the terms.“We make sure that they know how tosend an email with an attachment,and they know how to download thatattachment,” says Nash. Basically abest-practices for new online students,the course teaches them things likehow to use a discussion board as wellas the protocol for using a discussionboard; it spends some time teachingthem how to interact with their fellowstudents and their instructor.

8. Metrics. Nash points out that whilea lot of schools are diligent aboutmeasuring their enrollment –measuring as often as two or threetimes every term – they measurecourse completion rates and persist-ence rates perhaps every three years.“If it’s important, measure it,” says

Nash. “Measure as much as you canas often as you can.” He mentions in-dividual course completion rates, per-sistence, students continuing from oneyear to the next, and student satisfac-tion rates. “Measure it all and shareit,” he says. “Share it frequently andthat will send a signal that this isimportant. It is important.”

9. Focus on individual courses.Spotlight the ones that have thebiggest problem with attrition. Focuson those while measuring resultsagainst the baseline. Pay attention toboth the differences in course comple-tion rates and the cost and resources ittook to get there. Do a cost-benefitanalysis, measuring return on invest-ment.

10. Read the research. Keep a fingeron the pulse of the research going on

in the field. Nash especially recom-mends keeping tabs on the first yearexperience group at the University ofSouth Carolina.(www.sc.edu/fye)They have a number of publicationsand best practice documents as well asa listserv. Much research on retentionis based on traditional face-to-faceprograms. But, Nash says, part of thechallenge of running a distanceprogram is to translate the benefits ofthat research into the distance learningenvironment.

11. Involve faculty. They are the keyservice providers. They should beinvolved in the needs assessment andin the planning because they’re goingto have to implement it. You needtheir buy-in and advice, Nash advises.�

Strategies for Increasing Online Student Retention and Satisfaction. • www.FacultyFocus.com

Understanding the Impact of Attritionon Your School

By Najmuddin Shaik PhD

PAGE 6�

FROM PAGE 4

6

rankings. Even though the methodology of the U.S. Newsand World Report rankings is controversial, administratorsrealize that that low rankings combined with low retentionrates raise questions about the quality and credibility ofthe institution and if not addressed can have serious conse-quences. Research over the last 50-years has enriched ourunderstanding of the causes and significance of studentretention yet retention rates have not improved signifi-cantly. It is frustrating and disheartening to both theresearch community and institutional management. Anumber of strategies have been proposed to overcome thechallenges of information flow between researchers andthe key stakeholders, to effectively communicate the signif-icance of retention to the key institutional decision-makers.Among the suggestions have been an evaluation matrix,use of graphics, multiple institutional comparisons, shortissue-specific reports, and a case study approach (seeFilkins, Kehoe, & McLaughlin, 2001 for details).Low student retention results in a significant loss of

revenue to the institution and has the potential to impactits financial health and survival. A marginal increase instudent retention can result in a significant gain in revenueto the institution. Researchers should therefore considercommunicating the issue of student retention in terms of afinancial model. The loss of revenue or cost model can beanalyzed from an individual, institutional, or societal per-spective.Gouws & Wolmarans propose the use of quality cost

control principles to determine the cost of student attritionfrom a societal perspective. This approach places a heavydemand on the data, which is not easily available. Again, itis also difficult to communicate the significance ofretention to institutional management. A simpler and moreeffective communication strategy is to use a conventionalaccounting framework to estimate the cost or lost revenue.Noel-Levitz presents the issue of student attrition in termsof lost tuition revenues based on the “Retention RevenueEstimator” template for 2-year, 4-year, and proprietary in-stitutions. Noel-Levitz demonstrates that a public institu-tion in the U.S. with 2000 freshman enrollment and adropout rate of 30% can save $1 million for a 10%increase in retention.Lowe, Pinegar, & Shaik (2006) estimate the potential loss

of revenue and the cost of student attrition with data froma small private online distance learning institution. Basedon monthly course rosters data they estimated the total en-rollments for 2005 to be 909. To estimate the number ofstudent withdrawals for each quarter, they selectedstudents who withdrew from the course after the last dateto drop from a course without any financial penalty. Out ofthe total enrollment of 909 students for the 2005 academic

year, 496 students (54% retention) maintained active en-rollment status and 418 students (46%) withdrew from thecourses.The total revenue estimate for 2005 came to $7.02

million dollars. Total expenses for the 2005 academic yearwere estimated as a percentage of the total revenue. SeeChart 1.

The per student average expense after accounting for the491 withdrawals ($6.1 M / 491) is estimated to be $12,400.If there are no withdrawals so that all the 909 studentscontinued with the program ($6.1 M / 909) then the perstudent average expense is $6,700.At this institution they found that students on average

enroll in 3 courses for a total of 12 credit hours generatinga per student total revenue ($300/hr x 12 credit hours) of$3,600. They estimated the potential loss of studentrevenue stream based on the total withdrawals for thequarter. For the 2005 academic year a total of 418 with-drawals resulted in a loss of 2 million dollars in potentialrevenue to the institution. See Chart 2.

The data from the financial framework when combinedwith assessment data from service quality instrument suchas DL_sQUAL (Shaik, Lowe & Pinegar, 2006) will facilitatethe development of targeted interventions to increasestudent retention. Using a simple financial (accounting)framework it is possible to present a realistic picture of thepotential effect of student attrition to the key institutionaldecision-makers.

References:• Filkins, J. W., Kehoe, L. E., McLaughlin, G. W. (2001).


FROM PAGE 5

PAGE 7�

7

Distance education has openedup opportunities for morenontraditional students than

ever. With this increase in nontradi-tional students and the growing useof online course delivery methodscomes a need to develop studentretention strategies that are tailoredto these students’ experiences, whichoften are quite different from those oftraditional-age students in face-to-face settings.To better understand her institu-

tion’s student retention efforts, and tobegin looking for ways to improvepractices, Linzi Kemp, area coordina-tor for business management andeconomics at the State University ofNew York, Empire State College,conducted a workshop within theCenter for Distance Learning, whichinvolved faculty, student services pro-fessionals, and instructional technol-ogists and which took a holistic lookat practices at Empire State that affectstudent retention. Kemp found this tobe an important exercise becausemuch of the research on student

retention relates to traditionalstudents, while the average age ofstudents at Empire State is 36, andthey often take much longer thanfour years to complete a bachelor’sdegree.

Rating retention practicesKemp and her colleagues looked at

existing practices that affect studentretention and put them into thefollowing categories to help decidehow to allocate resources forretention efforts and to find areasthat needed improvement:• Star — Practices that need invest-ment (time/money) to retainstudents. These included astudent community that supportslearning, student orientation andservices, and instructor/mentor(adviser) training support.

• Cash cow — Established and suc-cessful practices that retainstudents. These included openadmission, good mentoring,timely personal attention tostudents, perception of quality

online courses and instruction,affordable tuition, small classes,and flexibility.

• Question mark — Practices mayor may not retain students. Theseincluded unsupervised studentdiscussion, Web-only courses,and group contacts versus indi-vidualized contacts withstudents.

• Dog — Practices that don’t retainstudents. These included asyn-chronous-only technology,incorrect or misleading informa-tion, unfriendly Web site, inade-quate instructor technologyskills, and transfer creditconfusion.

Kemp says. “Every person that thestudent is coming in contact with,and every engagement the studenthas with the process, can retainstudents or cause students to give up.I think in any situation we need toconsider that the student is dealing

Retention Research: Issues in Comparative Analysis.Annual Meeting of the Association for InstitutionalResearch, Long Beach, CA.

• Gouws, D.G & Wolmarans, H. P. (2002). Cost inTertiary Education: Making internal failure cost visible.Meditari Accountancy Research. Vol. 10, p. 87–108

• Lowe, S., Pinegar, K., & Shaik, N. (2006). RetentionEconomics: Developing a Framework to Investigate theFinancial Impact of Student Attrition on anEducational Organization. Distance LearningAdministration 2006 Conference, Jekyll Island,Georgia.

• Noel-Levitz, Inc. (2004). Retention Savings Worksheet.USA Group Noel-Levitz, Inc.https://www.noellevitz.com/Papers+and+Research/Retention+Calculator/Calculators.htm

• Shaik, N., Lowe, S., & Pinegar, K. (2006). DL_sQUAL:A Multiple-Item Scale for Measuring Service Quality ofOnline Distance Learning Programs. Online Journal ofDistance Learning Administration, 9(2).

• Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving College: Rethinking theCauses and Cures of Student Attrition, University ofChicago Press. �


Taking a Holistic View of Student Retention

By Christopher Hill

FROM PAGE 6

PAGE 8�

8

It comes as no surprise to thosewho work with distance learningpopulations to hear that these

students are typically dealing withdifferent challenges than are their tra-ditional-age, on-campus peers.According to the most recentNational Survey of StudentEngagement, distance educationstudents are typically older, workmany hours a week, and are oftensupporting families. However, thisvery profile can place these studentsat risk for not continuing in theirstudies or for not being successful.The typical first line remedy to aid

student success has been a first yearexperience program. These programs,which often include some sort of“University 101” course tailored toassisting students in their pursuit ofsuccess, have a well-established trackrecord boosting persistence andacademic standing of the studentswho enroll. Since the 1972 creationof the first such program at theUniversity of South Carolina,continual evaluation has shown theworth of these programs in increasing

retention and improving academicperformance. The original target ofthese programs, traditional-aged on-campus students, has clearly beenwell served. However, comparablestudies have not been done toexamine the utility of these programsfor non-traditional students, a popu-lation that often overlaps closely withthe distance education studentpopulation.Seeing a gap in the literature,

Sherry Miller Brown, director of theMcCarl Nontraditional StudentSuccess Center at the University ofPittsburgh, set out to learn if a firstyear experience class would help heruniversity’s non-traditional studentsovercome some of the barriers totheir success. Her research points tothe utility of a first year experienceprogram tailored to the needs ofthese particular student populations.

Reading the Literature,Constructing the CourseBrown’s work began in 2002, when

she raised close to $1 million for theuniversity to open the McCarl

Nontraditional Student SuccessCenter. This center is staffed withacademic advisors, career counselors,and other professionals dedicated tohelping the non-traditional studentstay in school successfully.Right away, she noticed a problem

that academic advisors across institu-tional boundaries will find familiar:the lack of time to spend withstudents who need it most. “Advisorsin our field have much higher caseloads,” she said, explaining that it isnot unusual for an advisor to have asingle hour each semester with eachstudent, regardless of how difficultthe student is finding their college ex-perience. “It is so hard to explain topeople how hard it is to be a non-tra-ditional student,” she says.Brown was also concerned by the

statistics that were available in the lit-erature, such as the estimate thatsome 50 percent of non-traditional/adult students will leavecollege without earning a degree,compared to 12 percent of traditional


with many different people in manydifferent departments, and ratherthan seeing those as separate peoplein separate departments, we need tounderstand that the students’ experi-ence is the one unifying thing for thecollege and that people within thecollege need to exchange ideas andconsiderations and come together to

see the students as a whole, ratherthan as a set of separate parts that wedo things to — trying to form acommunity of people within thecollege that supports students.”Kemp also has looked at retention

within individual courses and hasfound that the role of studentmentors (academic advisers) iscritical. One practice that Kemp has

found to help is monitoring studentparticipation and, when necessary,engaging the student in a three-wayconversation with the instructor andmentor. The mentor plays animportant role because often he orshe knows more about what is goingon in that individual adult student’slife than the instructor, Kemp says. �

Reducing the Risk: Effects of a First YearExperience Course for Non-Traditional Students

By Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti

FROM PAGE 7

PAGE 9�

9Strategies for Increasing Online Student Retention and Satisfaction. • www.FacultyFocus.com

age students. Additionally, 27 percentof non-traditional students will dropout in their first year, nearly twice therate of traditional students. (Both sta-tistics are from The Condition ofEducation, 2002).To address these high rates of non-

traditional student vulnerability,Brown wrote a first year experiencecourse targeted at this specific popu-lation. The course is taught primarilyby the center’s academic advisors,giving them an additional hour eachweek with their students. Theprimary goals of the course includesdevelopment of academic and careergoals; familiarity with universityresources; recognition of responsibil-ity of the student for his or her owneducation; recognition of diversity ofbackgrounds and viewpoints amongother students; familiarity with theuniversity environment; and explo-ration of each student’s interest andabilities.The course reflects the unique

needs and challenges of the non-tra-ditional students as they interact withthe university, in keeping with theflexibility of the first year experienceapproach. Brown notes that of the 18colleges at the University ofPittsburgh, “each one does first yearexperience differently.” In the case ofthe non-traditional student, differ-ences includes teaching the studentshow to access university resourceswhen certain offices are not physi-cally open to students who are onlyavailable on weekends or duringevenings. The course also addressessome more traditional learning skillsfor success, like memorizing, note-taking, and critical reading.During the first semester of the

course, academic advisors identified55 students considered “at-risk,” andasked them to take the first year ex-perience course. These students wereselected on the basis of GED scores,lack of previous college experience,

community college QPA averagesbelow 2.5, or evidence of attrition atmore than two colleges. Of thoseinvited into the course, 32 acceptedand 23 declined.Although Brown acknowledges a

bias that may have come from self-selection into the course, she believesthe dramatic difference in successbetween those who took the courseand those who did not speaks for

itself. After completing threesemesters, an impressive 88 percentof the experimental group of studentswho took the course were stillenrolled, versus only 26 percent ofthe control group who did not takethe course.Equally impressive are the QPA

scores for the two groups. After threesemesters, the mean term QPA for theexperimental group was 2.69, a fullpoint above the 1.96 mean for thecontrol group. At the same point,some 76 percent of the experimentalgroup had a QPA above 2.00 for thefall 2005 term, compared with 33percent of the control group.

Hints for distance educationAlthough initial research clearly

indicates the first year experiencecourse for non-traditional students isa success, Brown plans to continue

monitoring the program throughother research activities. For example,Brown says, “this fall we’ll look atdifferent populations of students,[like] students who transfer fromcommunity colleges.” She alreadyknows from the data that studentswho transfer to the university fromcommunity colleges often see adramatic drop in their QPA averagefor the first couple of terms. “Usuallyby graduation they will be close towhere they entered,” she says.However, the dramatic drop beforerebounding is when these studentsare in the biggest danger of droppingout.Brown believes the first year expe-

rience program could be adapted tofoster success and retention in thedistance education population, andshe has some advice for those at-tempting to construct an all-distanceversion. “In order to have a success-ful program, find a way to do realoutreach,” she says. She emphasizesthe importance of these studentshaving continual, personal attentionfrom the university, and the tools toassist with this are commonlyavailable. “It is really important tohave discussion boards so you cantalk back and forth. Personalize it asmuch as possible,” she says.She expresses concern that distance

education programs may neglect tofocus adequately on student servicesand student development for thispopulation, and she urges administra-tors to continue to find ways thatthese students can remain in contactwith the staff when needed andreceive prompt responses to requestsfor assistance. “You have to provideoutreach to your students. Find waysto connect to them [with] not just alink or a web page,” she says. �

FROM PAGE 8

Although Brown acknowledges

a bias that may have come

from self-selection into the

course, she believes the

dramatic difference in success

between those who took the

course and those who did not

speaks for itself.


Retention remains the Achilles’heel of distance education.Estimates of the failed

retention rate for distance educationundergraduates range from 20 to 50percent. Distance education adminis-trators believe the failed retentionrate for online courses may be 10 to20% higher than for face-to-facecourses.Colleges and universities today are

under pressure to accommodatelarger and larger percentages of thepopulation. Distance education iscentral to that mission. That makesretention a crucial issue for post-secondary institutions. It has becomemandatory to understand whystudents leave their online courses,and what will keep them there.Michael Herbert, Chair of the

Criminal Justice Department atBemidji State University, holds aPh.D. in teaching and learning fromthe University of North Dakota anddeveloped the first online courses inhis department. He serves as anonline faculty mentor and is on theUniversity's Center for ExtendedLearning Committee, which overseesthe administration of distancecourses. He recently completed astudy of retention at his institution.In an email interview he gave eightinsights he gained during the courseof his study.

1. Students need to feel integratedinto the program and the institu-tion. Research has shown that re-sponsiveness to student’s needs is a

critical variable in terms of retention.A sense of belonging as a student,whether traditional or distancelearner, has been shown to be animportant aspect in retention, and re-

sponsiveness to student’s needs is alarge determinant in a student feelinglike they are part of a course or an in-stitution. Intuitively we can assumethat if students are not engaged anddo not perceive themselves as anintegral part of their environmentthey will likely choose to leave thatenvironment and seek one wheretheir needs are met.

2. Pedagogy and instructor trainingaffect retention. There is a huge(and flawed) assumption that profes-sors who teach on-campus coursescan automatically do a good job

teaching online courses. Teachingonline has its own very distinct set ofinstructor skills that are essential foran online course to be successful.While online instruction may nothave its own separate pedagogy,those professors who teach well inthe traditional (on-campus) settingneed to add to their skill set those ad-ditional unique skills required for asuccessful online course. So in thatsense it may not be a matter of devel-oping a separate pedagogy for onlineteaching, but expanding those tradi-tional teaching skills with resourcesthat allow an effective transitionbetween on-campus and onlinecourse delivery.

3. Family obligations affectretention. If we look at retention interms of categories of variables, themost commonly used categories area) personal variables, b) institutionalvariables and c) circumstantialvariables. With that noted, familyobligations would fall under thepersonal variable category and whilemy research did not specificallydelineate family obligations as aseparate response, most researchwould indicate that family obligationswould certainly have an impact onretention for several reasons. Thesemay include the sharing of householdresponsibilities, having access to thehousehold computer, and those addi-tional personal responsibilities thatare associated with caring for aspouse/significant other and anychildren or other family members incases where the student is responsi-ble for the care of an elderly parentor relative.

4. Support affects retention. Thereare two distinct types of support. Thefirst would be that level of support(or the lack thereof) the studentreceives from outside of the institu-

Eight Suggestions to Help You GetYour Retention Act Together Now

By Christopher Hill

PAGE 11�

A sense of belonging as a

student, whether traditional or

distance learner, has been

shown to be an important

aspect in retention, and

responsiveness to student’s

needs is a large determinant in

a student feeling like they are

part of a course or an

institution.

11

tion. Those sources would beemployers, family and significantothers. From an institutional per-spective, important variables includestudent support services; whichwould include tech support, financialaid, and instructional support.Institutions must have in place not

only the mechanisms to adequatelyrespond to student’s needs, but mustalso have the supporting resources

available to make those mechanismsoperate in a timely fashion. Forexample, it would not suffice to havea computer technical support deskthat is only open during normal uni-versity hours. Most online studentsare working during non-traditionaltimes and may need support in theevenings or on weekends. With thatsaid, the resources (in this casestaffing) must be made available tomeet the unique needs of distancelearners.

5. Interaction between students andthe institution affects retention. Thestudent experience with onlinecourses starts long before they firstlog onto the internet and sign into

the class. Students may have contactwith numerous campus offices longbefore they log into class for the firsttime. The ease with which they canregister for the class, informationreceived prior to the start of class, as-sociated costs and start-up informa-tion (how to log on, courserequirements and the like) play animportant role in getting students offon the right foot. We need torecognize that there are many peoplewho have a direct impact on thestudent’s online learning experience.From the admissions office tofinancial aid to computer support allneed to understand how they play animportant role regarding onlinelearners.

6. Students satisfaction with the in-stitutional environment affectsretention.The most important institutional

variable that students reported in myresearch were that of faculty being re-sponsive to student needs, followedby the institution responding quicklyto requested information and thirdly,by faculty providing timely feedbackabout student progress. What wasinteresting was that when measuringstudent variables in terms of both im-portance and satisfaction, thefollowing top four variables were thesame in both categories:• faculty responsiveness• quality of online instruction• timely feedback• institutional response time torequests for information.

7. Student variables affect retention.The only variable in my study tohave statistical significance was thatwhich asked if the students’ onlineexperience had met their expectation.Those students who did not retaintheir online course had a statisticallylower mean score than those whohad retained their online course. Sowhat we may glean from this is that

all of those variables, both organiza-tional and institutional, combine tocreate that overall experience ofmeeting a student’s online course ex-pectations. The less those expecta-tions are met, the less likely thosestudents are going to successfullyretain their course.

8. There are best practices that canaffect retention. Consistently whatcomes through in research is thatengaging students and making thema part of the learning experience iscritical for success. From an instruc-tional perspective, professors who areactively engaging learners have muchmore success with student retention.By utilizing those resources availablein online instruction in terms ofengaging students and building thatsense of community, faculty can bebetter able to meet student’s expecta-tions. Holding synchronous chatsessions, asynchronous discussionboards, group projects, and havingthe students moderating course dis-cussions are just some ways in whichonline students can become engaged.This is not to say that the founda-tions are not created by the facultymember. As experienced facultyknow, the best-run courses are thosein which the faculty member maylook like a duck leisurely glidingacross the lake, while underneaththose webbed feet are paddling likemad. �


FROM PAGE 10

We need to recognize that

there are many people who

have a direct impact on the

student’s online learning

experience. From the

admissions office to financial

aid to computer support all

need to understand how they

play an important role

regarding online learners.

12

Research has shown thatpersonal contact is one of thekeys to retention in distance

education. Relationships with otherstudents are helpful, and relationshipswith instructors are even better. Buthaving one person dedicated to thestudents’ success and on hand to helpthem at each turn is better yet. JanetTruluck, Coordinator of the OnlineMaster's of Adult Education DegreeProgram at the University of Georgiahas developed that idea into amentoring system that offers thestudent one person that the studentsknow they can come to withproblems, who maintains contact withthem throughout the degree program.It’s a system that appears to be suc-cessful in keeping students in theprogram and improving the quality oftheir experience while in it.“A lot of the research talks about

attrition in online programs, how it’sreally hard to keep students in theprogram,” says Truluck, noting that itcan work differently with systematicmentoring,.The most important thing, Truluck

and her colleagues determined, was tohave a point person in whom thementoring functions are centered.Dedicated to the cohort as they movedthrough, she could become familiarwith and to the students. “I’m here forthe students whenever there’s an issuethat comes up. It always gives themthe feeling that they’re not just outthere in cyberspace somewhere doingthis on their own, that there’ssomebody here who actually knowsabut them and who they are and what

they’re doing and what they’re tryingto accomplish,” Truluck says.There are seven basic components

of Truluck’s online mentoring practice:1. Telephone each student prior tothe beginning of the program.

2. The coordinator should teach oneof the first courses in the program.

3. Open a “coffee shop” in eachcourse

4. Use the tools in WebCT toestablish an instructional relation-ship.

5. Establish “virtual” office hours.6. Telephone students again mid-semester.

7. Conduct a final exit interview.

1. The initial phone call to eachstudent. Truluck begins to establish apersonal connection with each studentin a phone call to each one before theprogram begins. Truluck tells themthat she will be their advisor through-out the program, that she will followtheir progress and will be available ifat any time they have questions orissues. Truluck may give examples ofthe benefits they will receive byobtaining a master's degree. She mightdiscuss their goals and motivation forbeing in the program.Truluck gives then an idea of what

will be required of them in theprogram. “I like for them to realizewhat’s involved in the programbecause it’s not an easy thing to doespecially if they’re working full timeand have families and other commit-ments.” Truluck tells them that they’regoing to have to be good timemanagers in order for them to be suc-

cessful, and gives them some timemanagement tips. “I try to make surethat they know what they’re gettinginto before they start,” she says.

2. The coordinator should teach oneof the first courses in the program.As an instructor in the program,Truluck also believes that it’simportant for her to teach one of thefirst courses that each cohort takes.“They get to know me and I get toknow them. And then after that firstsemester they move on to other peopleas instructors but they still know thatI’m here and I’m their adviser and Iwill be in touch with them throughoutthe two years.”Teaching the first, or one of the first

courses does a lot, in Truluck’s mind,to support and encourage a relation-ship with the faculty, and her in par-ticular. She can also make the studentsaware of what the expectations arethroughout the program. “We want toencourage students to talk to eachother and to us. To take the materialthat they learn and reflect on it andthen come back and have a discussionabout it. That is where the learningtakes place. Teaching the course givesme the opportunity to make themaware of those expectations.”Since she teaches in the program

anyway, coordinates the program, andsince she’s going to be their adviser, itmakes sense to Truluck that she’sthere at the beginning. She can get asense of how they’re doing academi-cally and/or personally. A significantsubset of students get “pretty over-whelmed” at the beginning andTruluck is there to offer help gettingover that initial hump.

3. Open a “coffee shop” in eachcourse. The “Coffee Shop” is a featuresupported by WebCT, a discussionarea where students can go to talkabout things outside of their course-work. “That’s where you can go and


Online Mentoring BuildsRetention

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just have casual conversation withother folks,” Truluck says. “Like ifsomething’s going on in your life andyou want to share it with people, yougo to the coffee shop.” The intent isto build and support camaraderieamong the cohort. It often works.“I’ve had students from time to timewho’ve had things come up in theirlives and they say, ‘I think I’m goingto drop out, I just can’t do this,’” saysTruluck. “And all the other studentswill just rally around and they’ll say,‘No, no, no, don’t do that, we’ll helpyou, we’ll do what we can to keepyou in here.’“It’s an interesting process to see

because when we first started out Ihad no idea you could form relation-ships like this without ever havinglaid eyes on anybody.”

4. Use WebCT tools to reachstudents. WebCT has a variety oftools and Truluck finds most of themuseful. But the main tools she usewith her mentees are the discussionfeatures. That’s where the academicwork and all the other talk goes on,and this is where Truluck has herCoffee Shop. “I think that helps themfeel more comfortable, free to askquestions, or if they have a problemthey can go in there and they caneither e-mail me or each other,”Truluck says.

5. Establish “virtual” office hours.Chat rooms are not Truluck’s favoritefeature, but this is where she holdsher office hours. She may say she’llbe in the chat room Wednesday fromtwo until three, and if a student hasany questions about the course orany questions about the program orany other issues they want to discuss,that’s their opportunity. And thestudents do tend to show up. “Maybethere’s been a misunderstanding ofthe expectations of the course or theprogram and it gives me the opportu-

nity to encourage them,” Trulucksays. But the conversations can befairly wide-ranging. Subjects likewhat they can do when they finishtheir degree, potential researchpartners, among other things, comeup.

6. Telephone students again mid-semester. At first Truluck wasn’t surewhether this was important or not.“You’d think that with all the othercontacts it wouldn’t matter,” shesays. But it turned out that thestudents were very appreciative. SaysTruluck: “I think it’s because youactually get to talk to somebody.Everything else is written and readand video’d--there’s always thatdistance there. And when you canactually pick up the telephone andtalk to someone it’s important tothem.” It’s important to Truluck, too.She likes to know how her studentsare doing—-how the first half of thesemester has gone, have they hadany problems, was there anythingthey didn’t understand. Mid-termacademic evaluations are standard inall the program’s courses. So the mid-term phone call complements theacademic with an evaluation from thepersonal side.

7. Conduct a final exit interview. Arequirement of the master’s programis that students have an exit examand the turn in a portfolio, to beevaluated by a committee. At the endof that process Truluck asks them ifthey have any suggestions foranything the faculty and administra-tion can do to to make the programbetter for students. The program’sphilosophy is that, if at all possiblethey adopt the suggestions. “If theyhave suggestions that come out ofthose exit exams, we implment thosechanges,” Truluck states.Truluck says they’ve had some

good suggestions from students. Shecites as an example a research coursescheduled for the second year. The

students suggested it would behelpful to take it earlier in theirstudies. The program administratorsput it in the first year. It has turnedout to be a help to the students in un-derstanding research reports and pre-sentations at a valuable early point inthe program. “Simple suggestions likethat I think make the process betterfor the students,” Truluck says.Students won’t always initiate com-

plaints or suggestions. “We see itfrom our side,” Truluck admits, “andif you don’t hear anything youassume everything is fine out there.But if [the students] get the opportu-nity to say let me think about thisand see what I can come up with,they usually come up with somethingvalid.” Truluck had one group ofstudents who actually put together aPowerPoint presentation for futurestudents, giving advice on how toorganize themselves for the program.“Now I use that for all the newstudents,” Truluck says.Does Truluck feel that she estab-

lishes a relationship with thestudents who come through theprogram? Yes, most definitely, shesays. She stays in touch with a lot ofthem. “And they form relationshipswith each other that are really goodto see.“They don’t ever come to campus.

The first time we all see each other isat graduation. And that’s a lot offun.” �


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Recruiting and retaining distancestudents is as much an art as ascience. Gloria Pickar founded

the Compass Knowledge Group to helpschools, both public and private, builddistance education programs andrecruit and retain students. FromNorthwestern and Boston University totiny Mailhurst University in Portland,Oregon, Compass Knowledge providesrecruitment and retention services for20 distance learning programs. In theprocess they have derived principlesfor attracting and keeping those noto-riously difficult-to-hold-on-to distancestudents. Here is some of the fruit ofGloria Pickar’s experience.

1. Retention begins with recruit-ment. “One of the worst things youcan do on the retention side is to putstudents in a program who are notqualified,” says Pickar. Remember thatyou’re not trying to sell students yourprogram. You’re trying to help themunderstand what the requirements ofthis program are, whether they meetthe qualifications of this program andhow this program is going to translateinto their career goals.

2. Recruitment begins with research.Pickar believes in doing a lot of initialresearch before you launch a program.Research can tell you what the oppor-tunity is for a viable program. Look atthe market place and assess the feasi-bility of the program. See if you willbe serving a particular marketplaceneed. Remember that most of youronline programs will be targetingworking professionals and not the

standard 18 to 22 year old undergradu-ate demographic--people who areemployed and looking to advance intheir careers or change their career.Pickar says to ask four questions

when examining your potentialmarket.a. What’s the size of that audience?b. What occupations would feed intothe profession that this degree isintended for?

c. What’s the size of each of thoseoccupation groups?

d. how fast is the degree professiongrowing?

For example a promising programwould have an audience size of atleast 100,000. It would preparestudents for professions that aregrowing faster than the average occu-pational growth rate as defined by theBureau of Labor Statistics. Currentlythat is 15 percent annually.These are things that would push or

pull someone into your program.What’s the growth rate of that particu-lar degree market; how many degreesare being conferred every year? (Thisdata is readily available to you fromthe National Center for EducationalStatistics http://nces.ed.gov/) If thereare only a few hundred degrees thatare being conferred nationally in thatprofession each year, it’s unlikely thatit would be successful in an online en-vironment. Pickard sets a benchmarkof at least 500 degrees conferred ingraduate degree programs, 1000 in un-dergraduate programs.The second area is what Pickard

calls degree demand drivers. Look for

things that would make this an attrac-tive program for a particular profes-sional. Is there the opportunity forincreased compensation with thisdegree? What kind of salary differen-tial would there be before and afterobtaining the degree? Are there man-agement opportunities or opportuni-ties for promotion? Is the degreeneeded for licensure in a profession,as is true in clinical laboratorysciences, education, nursing and manyof the health professions? Licensure re-quirements are strong demand drivers.The third major area to consider is

audience accessibility. If you do findout that the audience is large enough,how will you reach them? There maybe lists available from professionalsocieties or associations. Find outwhat journals your prospectivestudents read. Do those journals andmagazines have lists available and ad-vertising opportunities? Find out whatkind of key words your people use tosearch for information in their field.What online education directories arethere, and what kinds of leads orenquiries are they generating?The last major area Pickar looks at

on the marketplace side is what shecalls the competitive landscape--finding out what how many competi-tors are there, and who they are andwhich ones are competitors for yourproposed program.

3. Make an infrastructure assess-ment. Talk to your faculty and studentservice people to help them decide ifthey have the infrastructure to delivercourses to students at a distance.a. Do they have online applicationsand online registration?

b. Can students get textbooksonline?

c. Do they have an online library?d. Do students have 24/7 help desksupport?

e. What kind of course managementsystem are they using and is itrobust?


Nine Truths about Recruitmentand Retention

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4. Consider the curriculum. Sitdown with the faculty and determineif your program can be delivered in ascalable model. You’re not justlooking for scalability but also forevidence that retention can be high.Distance programs that are deliveredin a completely independent study,self-paced mode have very lowretention--typically around 25percent. Programs that can bedelivered in a cohort that has a lot ofcommunication and interactionbetween students, where there is alot of student support available, areable to get retention rates of 85 to 90percent for new students and 99percent for returning students.

5. Give students opportunities toapply what they’re learning. A keyto retention is having a multi-dimen-sional instructional experience.Students should not be in a situationwhere they’re just reading contentonline (Pickar calls this an electroniccorrespondence course). Have avariety of learning experiences andinstructional activities. Having activi-ties where students directly applywhat they learn in their workplacecan be important. The working pro-fessionals that you’re teaching arealready employed in the field andthey work in “laboratories,”--that is,their workplace--every day.Small group activities and doing

projects together, interacting witheach other, sharing what they’relearning, communicating on a regularbasis – these are all things that havea tendency to build a very strongcohort and a lot of cohesiveness inthat cohort. Students have a tendencyto support each other and not leteach other drop out.

6. Have support systems in place.Build an instructional delivery modelwhere students get support for the lo-gistical things that can create interfer-

ences which can ultimately makestudents drop out. Someone must bedesignated to respond to things like“My textbooks didn’t arrive” and “Iforgot how to submit that assign-ment” and “I got kicked out of mytest last night.” Every programshould ideally have a fulltimeprogram manager to respond to suchneeds. That individual providesstudent and faculty support while theprogram is being delivered.

7. Track students on a regular basis.Simply being in regular communica-tion with students is important. Notonly should faculty be in regularcommunication during their coursesbut the program manager—theretention specialist—should beavailable to check on students, andmake sure they have the resourcesthey need. Pickar’s group starts thetracking process with what they call alearning preparedness assessment.Once someone is registered as a newstudent, the program manager makescontact with that student, and goesthrough a checklist to make sure thatthey have what they need to be readyto start their first course. Do theyhave their books? Has financial aidbeen taken care of? Is their computerready and working? Do they have ahigh speed connection and if theydon’t what are they going to do tocompensate? Have they gone throughthe orientation site for their coursemanagement system?Getting things like this in order be-

forehand can make a big difference inwhether or not, when the studentopens that first course, they are readyto learn. If not prepared in this waythe reaction can be panic and animpulse to drop out. At that point inthe cycle, students are typicallyfocused more on simply getting intothe program than they are onlearning.

8. Don’t overload them. Pickar rec-ommends what she calls “minimal

course sequencing.” The idea is thatit’s better to have two or threecourses offered one at a time duringthe course of a semester, even if thecoursework is more intense, than toask students to take three courses si-multaneously over the entiresemester. “We find that working pro-fessionals do better if they take twoor three courses per term but only doone course at a time. You get thesame amount of curriculumcompleted, but typically working pro-fessionals have the feeling that theycan only take on one more thing at atime. Instead of offering two or threecourses simultaneously, for twelve tosixteen weeks, offer one course forsix or eight weeks, and the next six toeight weeks offer another course.Do them back to back instead ofsimultaneously.”

9. Give the students an end in sight.Structure the delivery of courses sothat students can have an end insight. Think of recruitment as not somuch signing students up forcourses, as enrolling them in theprogram. Student advisement shouldbe about the student completing theprogram, earning the degree or thecertificate rather than just enrolling incourses. Help students to look attheir work and their personalschedules and see how they’re goingto complete the program in 18months if it’s a master’s degree, twoyears if it’s a bachelor’s degree. Howare their courses going to fit into aschedule so they can get a sense ofwhat the time-to-degree is. “If theylook at it and say, ‘OK, I’m onlytaking one course at a time, I’mtaking three courses a year--it couldtake me ten years to complete,’ afterthey do about two terms they giveup. But if you structure it in a way sothat they can see that at the end ofthat 18 month or two year tunnel,I’m going to earn my degree, theirstick-to-it-iveness and cohesion ismuch stronger.” �


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One of the most difficult tasksthat your instructors face iskeeping students engaged. It’s

a difficult enough task when you’vegot the students in front of you face-to face. It’s an even more difficulttask when the students are distant,given that you have a separation bothphysical and conceptual between youand them. And perhaps even morechallenging is the engagements ofstudents with each other. Fail at en-gagement and you can have problemsof alienation, a lack of commitmentand even potentially anti-socialbehavior. How can you help your in-structors understand the phenome-non of engagement? Jim Waters, aPhD candidate at Drexel University,has done some research into the phe-nomenon of online student engage-ment that may help your instructorstravel this tricky path.

Patterns of Participation“What I’ve found is that there are

some interesting patterns,” Waterssays. One of those patterns is theimpact of certain key participantswithin a community of enquiry. Invarious studies, Waters has foundthat although we have an idea of anonline community as a kind of partic-ipatory democracy it very frequentlydoesn’t work out that way. In fact, in-structors often find themselvesdepending on a core of perhaps 20percent of the students who areactually responsible for most of thediscussion output. “For instance wemight be having a great discussion

section but when we actually lookinto it we find that about half themessages are coming from 5 or 6people,” he says. “It’s interesting towonder, why are these people beingmore attended to, taken moreseriously? And what can we do toturn people from relatively passiveconsumers of knowledge-building tomore active participants in theprocess?”From the start of his research,

Waters was struck by the differencebetween the people he describes ascontributing out of “contractual obli-gation” -- who will perhaps do theone or two messages a week asrequired--and the people who consis-tently post a great deal more andwhose messages are receiving a greatdeal more attention. Waters sought away of characterizing what madethese “thought leaders” different.At first he looked at some static

qualities, like the frequency ofpostings, the length of the message,the time of the posting, et cetera. Inthose terms, the students who werebeing taken more seriously weren’tnecessarily those who were the mostvociferous—they weren’t necessarilyposting longer, more complicatedmessages. But quite often they wereposting messages relatively early onin the process.

Finding the Thought LeadersSo one of Waters’ key findings for

instructors is that, if you have aweek-long discussion, it’s importantto have the impetus started early. For

instance, if somebody posts amessage in the first one or two days,those messages will be read verymuch more frequently than ifsomebody posts a message from daythree or beyond. Once you get to theend of the week there’s relativelylittle activity.What interested Waters was that

when he looked at the contributionsthat these “thought leaders” weremaking, there was a very heavy biastoward people who could be regardedas facilitating the discourse. Thesewere people who would be veryactive in making sure that otherpeople contributed. These peoplewere much more frequently attendedto and responded to than the rest oftheir peers.“With a bit of skill we would

generate this rather nice feedbackloop where one or two studentswould start a discussion, somebodywould chime in with a facilitatorymessage and then this wouldgenerate more facilitatory typeposts.”When the contributions to discus-

sions are broken down statistically,well over half of the contributions arestraightforward responses to the in-structor posts. About 20 percent ofthem were message where thestudents were actually trying to facili-tate the discourse. Waters found thatthose people who basically posted“one-off” responses to the instructorwould typically get a very low levelof response. For every four messagesthat they would post, they might getone back. Whereas people who weremore active in a facilitatory rolewould be getting back two or threetimes as many posts.In addition to the “contractual obli-

gation” posters, and the “thoughtleaders,” there was an additionalcategory of student. Waters callsthese the “complicators”, who weretrying to reframe the debate. They


Finding Helpful Patterns inStudent Engagement

By Christopher Hill

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often didn’t get much response at all,because these were people who weretrying to challenge the assumptionsof the questions they’d been given.Still, Waters found hope for inde-pendent thinking here.When Waters looked at the first

few weeks of a discourse, he foundthat on the whole students were rela-tively tentative about challenging theassumptions of the course, and theywere relatively tentative about talkingto each other. The discourse wouldbe mostly about responding directlyto the instructors. “As we got to thelast quarter, we would find that thestudents were much more keen aboutbeing a little braver,” Waters says.“They would also be responding toeach other’s posts far more.”Another interesting phenomenon

was that although people weretalking to each other more, theytended to form into rather well-defined cliques. At the beginning ofthe course a student might postmessages to about 12 or 13 others,but by the end of the course,although the student might beposting more individual messages,they might only be correspondingwith three or four different people.This was a fairly consistent pattern.“They were definitely concentratinginto some more clique-y behavior,”Waters says.There was a group of about eight

students whom Waters considered asbeing the key participants in thediscourse. Waters found that if mostof these eight students were involvedin discourse, then the group couldactually have a “fairly deep, fairlyinvolved thread with a great deal ofknowledge construction.” If these“thought leaders” weren’t active,then the discourse tended to be moreflat and linear.“You start with a very simple level

of engagement where the studentsare simply there,” says Waters. “And

you get to a point where the studentsare committed psychologically to theprocess, actively engaged andfocused on the fact that they arecommitted to a larger globalcommunity rather than involvingthemselves in this very individualknowledge building.“There’s not much we can tell

about them personally,” says Watersof the “Thought Leaders.” “Withinthe context of the online learners thatwe know, frequently they werepeople who had a strong interest inthe subject matter, often being profes-sionally involved in the area. Theymay also be people who had a lot ofexperience in the process of beingpart of an online community.Sometimes it was because they knewthe debate better. Sometimes itwasn’t because they were experts inthe debate, but the topic of the dis-cussion had generated sufficientinterest in them that they would goout and do more extensive research.”“There’s a certain drive that these

students have and part of myupcoming research is to see if we canidentify anything about thesestudents that makes them want totake on such responsibility. They mayjust be classic type A personalities,but at present we don’t really haveanyway of knowing.”

Applying the ResearchWhat can an instructor get out of

Waters’ research? One key issomething that instructors should bedoing anyway, which is to monitorhow things are going in the discus-sions very closely. And make surethat the people who are involved inkeeping discourse running aresuitably rewarded, so they don’t feellike they’re “speaking to a vacuum.”Instructors should keep “a verystrong finger on the pulse,” Waterssays.“It can be very disheartening when

you think you’re making strong con-tributions and you don’t get any

recognition when you think you’redoing something valuable. It’s veryeasy for a student to lose that in-volvement.”Waters says that it’s a tricky line to

walk between recognizing contribu-tions and keeping a hands-off stancetoward the discussion, which hegenerally recommends. “You onlywant to be involved with it when yousee something going wrong. I don'tnecessarily want to force the discus-sion or force the direction, but youwant to make sure it doesn't justpeter out into nothing. But in termsof some sort of rubric of how youmaintain impetus, we don’t have ityet.”“We’ve found very productive

patterns and we’ve found less pro-ductive patterns,” Waters says. Insome respects Waters has discoveredthat the difference between good dis-cussion patterns and bad patternsmay be as simple as question design.“In some cases we found that if youhad questions which were just toocomplicated, too many conceptualunits for the students to deal with,they just wouldn’t engage with them,they might answer one of two parts.Whereas if you had a lot of moretightly phrased questions andquestions that even if they wereopen-ended they were relativelyfinite, we actually got a good dealmore discussion.” �


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Service Center is a Web-basedStudent RelationshipManagement (SRM) application

developed by the staff of the Divisionof Academic Outreach, Office ofContinuing Education, University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign. Thegoal is to facilitate long-term relation-ship with students and promotestudent retention by providing consis-tent, personalized, quality value-added services to students, faculty,and campus administrative units.Service Center personalizes the re-

lationship with the students byproviding vital information at everypoint in the interface with thestudent while maintaining the confi-dentiality and integrity of data.Information is consolidated toprovide a unified view that includesstudent profile, registrations, courses,reports, requests, inquiries, andbusiness communications. ServiceCenter is a first step in the implemen-tation of Student RelationshipManagement strategies to promotestudent retention. It was tested andimplemented in August 2004 and hasreceived encouraging reviews fromstudents, academic outreach staff andcampus departments.

Student RelationshipManagementDistance education is undergoing

radical transformation as a result ofadvancements in computer technol-ogy and changes in the studentprofile. The Internet has created anew level of competition in distancelearning programs with the entry of

fast growing dot.com companies whopose a credible challenge to the tradi-tional educational institutions. Thereis a shift in the composition ofstudent population with a growingproportion of non-traditional studentsenrolling in the distance learningprograms. With a simple click of abutton students are able to shop forcourses and programs that best ac-commodate their schedules andlearning styles.Students expect a service-driven

value chain encompassing personal-ized attention, real-time responsive-ness and consistent guidance at everytouch-point during their stay at theinstitution. Corporations faced withsimilar challenges implemented a setof business-process and IT-based en-hancements designed to createinternal synergy among departmentsand processes, and optimize thevalue of all business encounters.These strategies are collectivelyreferred to as customer relationshipmanagement (Gray & Byun, 2001;Freeland, 2003).Academic institutions can benefit

from the experiences of corporationsby developing similar strategiesgenerally referred to as StudentRelationship Management (SRM)(Lemon, 2004). SRM is primarily astrategic business and process issueand the approach is to understandand anticipate the needs of studentsand collaborating partners. Successfulimplementation of SRM requires thatall processes and the technicalsolutions be aligned and, at a higherlevel, synthesized to serve the needs

of the students. From the student per-spective, effective SRM meansproviding unique services andlearning experiences such that thestudent wants to be engaged in along-term relationship with the insti-tution. With such strategic initiativesthe institution can recruit and retainstudents, improve services, reducecosts and improve staff productivityacross the institution. Effective SRMrequires an enterprise-wide informa-tion system to share relevant, consis-tent, and meaningful student profilesacross all student interfaces andtouch-points.

Service Center SystemArchitectureAcademic Outreach is considering

implementing SRM strategies. ServiceCenter is the first step towards imple-menting SRM. Data from theEnterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) ofUI-integrate, the University of Illinoisenterprise resource planning system(ERPS), is integrated with data froma number of student interfaces andcontact points to provide a unifiedstudent profile to personalize the re-lationship with the students.The computer technology for the

Service Center is based on three-tierarchitecture consisting of the clienttier, middle tier, and the data storagetier to facilitate scalability andupgrades. The user interface resideson the client workstation and is re-sponsible for getting data from theuser and presenting data to the user.The user interacts through standardbrowsers such Internet Explorer,Netscape, or Mozilla by sendingHTTP/SHTTP requests to the applica-tion server. The application logic ison the middle tier and consists ofSecurity Firewall, Microsoft IIS WebServer, and the Application Server.Security is implemented through

the security firewall to prevent unau-thorized access to data and system


Service Center: A Strategy toPromote Student Retention

By Najmuddin Shaik, PhD

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resources. Additional layer of securityis built through the user authentica-tion system. The system is also pro-grammed to accept requests for systemresources from trusted ports. The ap-plication server hosts the ColdFusionand ASP.NET client-server-sidescripting application. The web servermanages requests using HTTPprotocol connector through thesecurity firewall, performs businesslogic processing, and sends responsesto the client. Data is stored onMicrosoft SQL database server.

Service Center FeaturesService Center is designed with a

number of features including:• Web-based user interface• multilevel security access toensure privacy and integrity ofdata

• separate interfaces for AcademicOutreach Staff and campusdepartments

• online registration, tuition and feeassessment, and payments system

• search function to enablesearching student and course in-formation

• student profile that includespersonal information, address,email, phone, prior college,current term registrations, enroll-ment history, registration activitylog, registration hold, expectedgraduation date etc, to providecustomized assistance

• triggered alert to generatereminders that can be channeledto staff for follow up

• communication tools to enablestaff to maintain contacts andtrack student requests efficiently.Option to send personalized e-mailrelating to programs, specialevents and activities, targeted toindividuals or groups of studentsand program managers (Figure 2:Communication Center)

• library service to students and in-structors

• online customized reports withdata from EDW and an in-housedeveloped Datamart

• FAQs with updated information onprocesses

• online tutorials in Camtasia tominimize staff training require-ments.

Service Center and ProcessImprovementsService Center facilitates a number

of processes. It addresses the chal-lenges faced by staff including but notlimited to answering a growingnumber of e-mail requests, respondingto student inquiries and numerouscommunication efforts.• Consistent, correct, and updatedinformation across all student in-terfaces and a policy of gradualelimination of data from standalone systems

• Standardization and simplificationof all processes beginning with en-rollment and course registration

• Reduction of manually processedstudent transactions and elimina-tion of redundant processing ofstudent transactions

• Integration of Academic Outreachweb site with the central databaseto present consistent and correctinformation

• Unified student profileconsisting of- demographic information(person details, address, phone,email, prior institution back-ground, registration log).

- enrollments for the current term,enrollment history, and registra-tion activity logs.

- service requests – outstanding,closed, and action taken – suchas general inquiry, request forgeneral information, application,complaints etc.

- log of student and staffinteractions

• Communication Center configuredto assist staff to produce customletters using student’s preferredemail accounts and to managethese individually or on a groupbasis. Enable staff to respond toenquiries in an expedient andefficient manner

• Reports Management to provide aseries of reports covering enroll-ment roster, course listing,financial reports, reports to stateand federal agencies

• A system of internal data valida-tion processes to identify inconsis-tent and missing data.

ConclusionService Center is an attempt by the

staff of Academic Outreach to providequality and meaningful services tostudents and collaborating universitypartners to promote student retention.Reviews so far has been very encour-aging and positive from both thestudents and staff. Service Center canprovide a significant reduction in costto serve students and enhance studentexperiences. When fully implemented,in conjunction with SRM, ServiceCenter will enable staff to turn everyinteraction into a highly personalized,meaningful student interaction andthen forge these interactions into along-term relationship with thestudents and make their experiencememorable.

ReferencesFreeland, J. (2003). The Ultimate

CRM Handbook. NY: McGraw Hill.Gray, P. and Byun, J. (2001).

"Customer RelationshipManagement". Retrieved March 3,2005 from http://www.crito.uci.edu/publications/pdf/crm.pdfLemon, C. (2004). "Challenges in

Marketing and Student RelationshipManagement in Higher Education".Retrieved March 3, 2005 from http://brandsequence.com/pdf/mktng_srm_high_ed.pdf �


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