This course was inspiring. Some of my takeaways were:
- Retention is the by-product of doing the right things the right way, of having the right people in the right place at the right time.
- It is important that school personnel nurture positive, constructive, hopeful paradigms among students.
- Schools with the best retention rates are successful in engaging everyone within the organization to improve retention and are committed to establishing retention, through better customer service, as a basic institutional objective.
- Everyone in the institution must understand that student success is the primary measure of institutional success. Everyone must understand that long-term financial success is the by-product of student success.
- The institution must be relentless in telling students about the institution's support services and the school's commitment to student success.
These are just a few of the nuggets I gleaned. The motivation received from reading the course material is refreshing. You don't realize how stuck in a rut you can be until you are presented with fresh soil to walk on. While going through the sections, ideas would develop in my mind which in turn generated new energy for improvements and new processes.
As a fully-online university student success coach, my primary communication with students is email or text messaging through the student portal. This can be a challenge for building trust and community. We've implemented a live web meeting for all incoming students each semester and found this to be very helpful for us and the students. Right out of the gate, they are getting community, they are seeing and hearing, in real-time, their point of contact for the school. We are developing a way to use the data from these meetings (who attended vs who persisted). We are hoping to see if this new implementation improves persistence and retention.
