Using technology to increase engagement, build community, and improve retention in an academic department
Concurrent Session 10
Brief Abstract
Higher education consistently seeks ways to use technology to increase engagement, build community, and improve retention. This session focuses on a project utilizing an online departmental ‘community,’ an online survey for students, and an institutional communication tool to address these needs and provide data to idenitfy improvement areas.
Additional Authors
Extended Abstract
Academic departments and institutions are seeking ways to effectively use technology for innovative ways to reach students, increase engagement, build a sense of community, and assist with retention efforts. In the new ‘blended’ college environment with an increased online presence, students feel disconnected from campus and seek ways to connect with other students, build a ‘community of learning,’ and partake in a university’s vast resources. They often struggle to do so, particularly online-only students, negatively impacting retention rates.
Many institutions and departments are finding student retention a continued focus and obstacle (exacerbated by the pandemic), particularly those with both online and on-campus students. To work towards addressing these issues, we created an online departmental ‘community’ for undergraduate and graduate majors and minors within our LMS. This provides a one-stop-shop for information, support, and connection for our students. This space allows quick access to institutional support, resources, and guidance in an easier, more streamlined way and provides faculty a reliable place to send students. An institutional grant provided training and wages for three departmental student workers who created the content for the ‘community.’
To complement this online community and our focus on communication and retention, we created an online qualitative survey to allow our students a way to provide feedback on the community, its content, and the department itself. This medium allows the department to provide students with an anonymous opportunity to comment on the content of the online community, departmental outreach to students, how the department can better support students, and career choices, etc. In addition, our department has committed to using our institutional campus-wide communication and student success tool to improve retention, communicate with students, and track student success. This online tool allows faculty, staff, and students to connect to campus services and provised support to students in achieving their academic goals. Specifically, it allows student success staff and faculty to:
- Send messages to students
- Share information between student support areas
- Provide specific feedback to students by raising Flags and Kudos
- Create personalized student success plans, including referrals to other campus offices
Data on the successes of these endeavors has been collected and provided to the department to identify improvement areas over the last few years. The presenters will highlight this data and offer possible options for others to use to connect with students, increase retention, and encourage student feedback to better meet their needs.
Presentation Purpose and Design:
The purpose of this session is to help faculty, administrators, and instructional designers identify strategies to assist in retention, communication, and student success efforts. The first part of the session will focus on the strategies employed in this project via three different digital technologies. Next, the presenters will focus on data from their own research on the student survey on departmental outreach, student access to the online community content, and retention outcomes. At key points, the presenters will poll the participants on their efforts towards similar scenarios and challenges and what technology is used at their institution for similar purposes.
After the presentation, the whole audience will participate in an interactive activity. After an initial reflection on their institution/department’s needs for student engagement, information sharing, and tracking student progress and retention, participants will have the opportunity to share and learn from each other. Participants will then separate into 2-3 person groups to discuss the needs they identified, what other institutions are doing, and how the resources discussed in the presentation could be used/modified for their needs.
Questions posed to participants will include (but are not limited to):
- For an online community for your department, what would you want to include and make easily/quickly accessible for students?
- How would you include students in its construction? What could students add to your process?
- To survey students about engagement in your department, their needs, and feedback to faculty/administration, what questions would you include?
- How does your institution track student retention/course progress and communicate with students?
The entire group will then come together to discuss their ideas, challenges, and posed questions for presenters/other participants.
Learning Objectives:
After this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Evaluate the benefits of various types of technology for tracking retention and student progress, communication, and soliciting feedback.
- Identify at least one piece of technology that they could use in increasing student retention efforts, building a ‘community’ of students, and/or encouraging feedback from students in their area/department/institution.
- Create a framework of launching similar efforts to meet the needs at their institutions.
- Interpret the research evidence of a project aimed to improve departmental communication, student outcomes, and student satisfaction.