Strategies

=Improving Online Student Retention and Success = =﻿Presenter: Brent Endicott, Senior Sciences online educator, (NLSD#113/Northlands College)=

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**Brent Endicott, edcentre.ca** ======

April 8, 2011 11:00-12:00 AM Archived Webinar
A discussion of current literature, personal experience and action research around Improving Online Student Retention

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 * Research Indicators: The slides and other resources below are from the webinar session.**

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 * Top Strategies:**

Ongoing Professional Development Increase allotment of time Resources Pedagogy linked to curriculum Increased use of Technology and supportive instructional mediums Increased f2f visitations Understand students Use technologies in pedagogy that students have interests in: cell phones, wikis, blogs, etcetera.

Great video! I'll add some other suggestions (haven't watched webinar recording yet - maybe these were already discussed):
 * Local student support - someone who works closely with both the student & the online teacher to help monitor student progess. This facilitator needs to take an active role in supporting the student, monitoring progress, providing rapid support to technical issues (even if this means tracking down the right tech support person), etc. Key word is "active", which does not have to mean overly time-consuming. The online teacher will likely want to make sure the local support person is given the class schedule, and will likely want to keep in close communication with the local facilitator on a very regular basis.
 * Develop a community of learners - find ways to get the students to meet, discuss, collaborate online on an ongoing, probably daily basis - keep them engaged and in the habit of meeting & working together. Easier said than done I know. Wikis, well-designed discussions, shared Google docs, Prezi, are some suggested tools. Developing this community may require some real changes from how one might deliver the same class F2F.


 * Links and resources:**