Student Retention in Online Classes

I'm one month into my Masters of Ed. program at U of I and through my assigned readings and my own experience in this program, I can see that the student dropout rate in purely online classes is an issue that needs to be addressed if any online class is to be successful.

Four factors contribute to the problem of student retention in online programs.

Time constraints
The first is that some students will sign up for an online class because it seems convenient and easy. In fact, a well-designed online for-credit course from an accredited institution will require more work and time to complete, on both the student's and the teacher's part, than its traditional, face-to-face (f2f) counterpart. (I'll explain why in a future post.)

Technology learning curve
Some students who sign up for an online class have little experience with navigating websites, searching for documents on the Internet, or even just typing accurately (not quickly, just legibly). These students need a lot of patient hand-holding and have trouble keeping up with assignments the first few weeks because they have so much more to learn. If the instructor is not willing to exlain, and re-explain, what seem like obvious, basic steps for navigating an online class, these student are gone.

Writing requirements
The third cause of the higher dropout rate in online classes is also one of the pedagogical benefits of an online class. Discussion and assignment completion take place mostly in the form of writing (forum postings, chat discussions, email exchange, etc), and writing requires focused, organized thinking. Even poor writing takes more thought and time than speaking, which is why writing contributes to student learning....and student retention problems, especially among students who thought an online class would be easier than an f2f one.

Unclear guidelines
Finally, in an online class, too often assignment instructions, discussion guidelines and writing prompts are written exactly the way they would be if they were going to be handed out in a traditional f2f class, with an instructor present to observe student reactions and immediately "decode" anything unclear or intimidating about the assignment. For a successful online class, extra work needs to be put into designing and writing online instructions, guidelines and prompts so that this f2f teacher decoding, rephrasing and patient explaining is built right into the assignment description.

Student retention in my own online class
Because of a combination of all of these issues, my own online graduate class has dropped from an enrollment of 19, to 10, and now 9.

While some of these were student-generated issues, all of them, especially the poorly written guidelines, could have been minimized with extra (sometimes Herculean) effort on the part of the online teacher. Graduate students are expected to be independant learners, but encountering new technology can make even the best student feel like a lost freshman all over again. If the goal is both course quality and student retention, this effect needs to recognized and accomodated.

The designers of the Global Campus online interface, and the designers of the standardized course documents (I'm guessing the University of Illinois Education Department) hold responbility, too. However, by the time the class starts, it is the teacher who best knows how to modify or supplement the course materials and presentation in order to address the particular misunderstandings, underestimations, frustrations, and sometimes panic, in his/her own class.

For an online class to work, extra effort must be made to teach not only the course content, but also how to be a successful online student. This must take the form of detailed, supportive, extraordinarily helpful, communication (not just a note to go back and reread the assignment or grading rubric posted on the class site). Define terms in simple ways, even when it seems the student should already know the definition. Give urls and hyperlinks in messages instead of directing students to find and click on course sites themselves. Have an FAQ page! Enable both the teacher and students to add to this page.

I teach English as a Second Language, both in private lessons and in college writing and speech courses. I have learned the hard way the importance of making instructions simple, specific and jargon-free. This is also true of an online course, especially an entry-level course where students may be struggling with the course interface as much or more than with the course content. This is a simple, important, and all too often overlooked step for limiting the student dropout rate in online courses.

Beginning my Master’s Ed/E-Learning program at U. of I. Global Campus

I have just been accepted into a new Masters of Education program at the University of Illinois that focuses on E-Learning. Here’s the kicker. The entire program is online. I will not meet face-to-face with any of my fellow students or teachers, with the possible exception of a few scheduled meetings for the final course or two of my 18-month program. I had the same misgivings that I think anyone would have with an entirely online program, but I decided to join this program because of the reputation of University of Illinois graduate school and their reassurance that the degree I earn will be listed as a Master’s degree from U. of I. with no addendum or asterisk indicating that it is anything other than a brick and mortar degree. I may have faith in the ability of U. of I. to deliver a quality online program, but I do not have faith in future employers feeling the same way about my new degree.

So, along with other educational technology topics that I discuss in here, I will use this blog to document my experience with this program.

A few facts about this program. It is brand spanking new. I am joining this online Master’s degree program in just its second semester of existence. It’s a small program. I am joining a group of 31 students. I am pursuing the Master’s of Ed, but it is possible to enroll in some of the same classes I’ll be taking in order to earn a Graduate Certificate in Foundations of E-Learninig or in Management of E-Learning. The online interface for all the classes is called Desire2Learn (D2L), accessible through the Global Campus website once you are enrolled in the program. It seems that it is not possible to explore this interface in any significant (or useful) way, or to look at course syllabii and reading assignments unless you are enrolled as a student.

Some first impressions. This limited access to detailed course descriptions and teacher profiles before joining the program is a weakness. It almost kept me from joining this program. Again, the reputation of the institution of the University of Illinois (and that I qualify for in-state tuition) was crucial in getting me past misgivings over what could potentially just be an expensive correspondence course. Now that I have paid tuition for my first course, Foundations of Online Teachng and Learning, I’ll find out whether I made the right decision.

Navigating U of I Global Campus "Direct2Learn" interface

The first step, even before paying the tuition for my first class, Foundations of Online Teaching and Learning, was “claiming” my online student id and resetting my password. Nope. I will not share, except to say that the requirement for the password forced me to create one that has no numbers related to any of my personal info and no combination of letters that form a word. No shortcuts or easy to remember word/number combinations. I also spoke to my personal counselor, Jennifer, who sounds like she’s 20 years my junior and was sincerely happy to “meet” me over the phone and help me with every question I could possibly have. This personal attention is reassuring and may be the kind of detail that keeps this program from experience the kind of drop-out rate that seems to plague most distance learning.

Armed with my id and password, I logged onto Global Campus, selected my first course and paid for it (by credit card, of course). The interface was simple and intuitive. There was also a link to the textbook for my class, Teaching and learning at a Distance, allowing me to order it through for $53.30 With a shipping charge of $9.99 (for one book!). Amazon.com had a used copy for $48.85, with a shipping charge of only $3.99. And a newer edition. The Global Campus “bookstore” strikes out.

No information available about the class, yet. The syllabus won’t be available until May 7, which, I guess, counts as the official first day of class. I suppose that makes sense, since students in a brick and mortar class wouldn’t get their syllabii until the fist day of class

Searching for research on Twitter

Look in your library's traditional periodical databases, in JSTOR, in Wilson Select, in LexisNexis, and you'll have a hard time finding articles written on current social web tools (aka Web 2.0), and you'll find nothing, at least at the time of this posting, published on Twitter. So, you take the same route all your students take and use Google, and there you find a site you can trust, according to all the criteria you have taught your students: The Chronicle of Education. And the journey begins.

In the Jan. 28, 2008, issue of The Chronicle of Education's online publication Wired Campus, the article "A Professor's Tips for Using Twitter in the Classroom" (http://tinyurl.com/yp7fhz) reported on the experience of David Parry, an assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, in using Twitter in his college class.

Much of what Wired Campus discussed in the article came from Parry's own Jan. 23, 2008, blog entry in Academichack (http://tinyurl.com/25u2cx). Parry's blog, in turn, refers to reading about Twitter in a Wired article by Clive Thompson, published June 26, 2007(http://tinyurl.com/2np4um). At first it seems that the trail runs cold here because Thompson's article is a purely personal report on his own (noneducational) experience as a Twitter user (aka Twitterer, Twit, Tweeter) with no links to other articles. But go back to Parry's blog and scroll down and there you'll find the research trail picks up.

In the comments section, Chris Lott very modestly states that he's written "a bit" on Twitter in his blog Ruminate (http://www.chrislott.org/tag/twitter/). An understatement about a detailed, incredibly useful, discussion of the uses and misuses of Twitter.

Another commenter, Allen A. Lew, suggests viewing his blog entry "Twitter Tweets for Higher Education" in his blog Web 2.0 Teaching Tools (http://tinyurl.com/yvpwn6). A site worth going back to repeatedly (and subscribing to if you aren't already overloaded on rss feeds).

Further down in the comments posting, you find that this blog entry in AcademicHack has been linked to a blog entry in Creating Lifelong Learners called "Carnival of Education" http://tinyurl.com/yvpwn6, which turns out to be a list of links to sites on using the 'Net in the classroom.

And even further down there's a comment posted by Richard Byrne (no relation) on using Pownce in the classroom, a service similar to Twitter, and a link to an article he wrote in Free Technology for Teachers (http://tinyurl.com/ysfzzr). In that article he links to another one he wrote Dec. 12, 2007, on Twitter titled "Get Kids Writing" (http://tinyurl.com/4vuj48).

This is the way of research on the web....not from website to website, but from blog article to blog article....to blog article to blog article... Now I need to log off and "tweet" about what I found.