Student Retention Strategies: How To Decrease Dropout Rates
Originally published by Call Hub
There are three stages
that every student should pass through to have a successful higher education
experience which are belongingness, engagement, and retention.
At the individual
level, students must feel connected to the university which helps in developing
relationships with others. Then comes the engagement stage, where students get
involved in university activities. Once students feel like a part of the
university, they can thrive in the environment and thus choose to finish their
course.
Student retention
strategies precisely aim at building this kind of relationship between the
students and the college, where the former feel safe and well supported. And
implementing these strategies will decrease dropout rates in the long run.
In this article, I’ll
take you through 5 student retention strategies that you can follow to
increase retention rates at your university.
Create A Perfect
First-Year Experience
Students end up
dropping out of college due to several factors. But the most common one is the
lack of integration. They never feel like a part of the campus community, get
used to an academic environment, or they lack confidence. That’s why you need
to implement a first-year experience program.
Create a small
community within your
campus for first-year students. This will help them socialize and build
relationships with fellow students and faculty members. Also, the students will
demonstrate positive relationships with peers and faculty, make better use of
campus resources, and display time-management skills.
In addition to that,
you can set up learning communities to increase engagement
among students. You should also encourage first-year students to join career
development programs which will help them plan their career, all of which will
motivate students to push through barriers and remain enrolled.
Collect Data And Put
It to Good Use
Universities must
gather data on curriculum effectiveness, student achievement, and resource
allocation to address the problem of low student retention rates. Once you have
this data, you can use it to enhance student retention efforts. A good way
to collect data is through polls and surveys.
By creating surveys
you can initiate a two-way conversation, understand student psyche, record their
responses, and curtail issues before they arise. But it requires a lot of
effort if you follow the old paper and pen method of conducting a survey. To
ease the process, you can create SMS surveys and make follow-ups based
on it. All you have to do is create a survey and send out text messages to your
students. Your initial message can say:
Administrator: Hi Amanda, It’s Brenda from the
administration office. As you know we’ve updated student curriculum for this
semester and we’d like to know what you think of it. Can you spend 5 minutes to
answer a few questions?
Amanda: Yes, count me in 👍
Once a student
responds you can make a note of their response in the survey forms. This will
help you follow-up with students and send reminders for important events.
Early Risk-Detection
Every struggling
student faces a common downward spiral. It looks like: a few
missed classes leads to a failed exam, which leads to a low midterm grade, and
ultimately withdrawal from the program.
Recognizing these
early warning signals is
the key to helping these students cope. But you’ve got thousands of students
and looking into each one of them can seem impossible. This is where you can
use SMS to deliver thousands of texts to students reminding them to study for
an upcoming test, work on an assignment or submit a project before the
deadline, within minutes.
You can customize
these texts to each student’s profile and you can collect real-time
responses. The goal here is to provide timely support to students
struggling to keep up with the demands of university-level academics.
Develop Intervention
Programs
An easy way to reach
out to at-risk students before they leave is by implementing a student
referral program. Send information and resources available in your university
that can help them address the issue at hand. The issue could be academic
difficulties, personal problems, financial issues, or social problems.
Getting students to
talk about these issues requires them to connect with you on a personal
level. But your guidance counselors don’t have enough time to talk to
each student. What you can do is use tools like peer-to-peer texting to
have personal conversations at scale. Your staff or counselors can easily
manage several conversations over text, get to know the students, identify
their problems, and give them the right the resources to solve their problems.
A guided
conversation looks like:
Counselor: Hi Amanda, I’m Brenda your college
coach. Are you facing any difficulties in your current academic curriculum? Student: I’m not able to recall what has been
done in class. I go back home read and watch videos but it’s not sticking in
my head when it’s time to take the test. What can I do? Counselor: Have you tried joining a study group? Student: No, not yet. I’m not sure if I can
concentrate in a group. Counselor: You should definitely give it a shot. I
was in one and it was great because you can talk about what your professor
discussed and you’ll hear various versions of it and that can be super
helpful. Student: Okay I’ll try that and let you know how
it goes. Thanks! Counselor: Good luck! And you’re welcome 😁 |
Promote Your Campus
Support Services Consistently And Creatively
If you think listing
your campus support services on your website or mentioning it on your social
media channels is enough, you’re wrong!
Campus support
resources such as academic counseling, career planning, alumni mentorship,
financial aid, and free tutoring should be showcased regularly and
creatively.
Your students need
encouragement to seek help and making your campus services more visible is the
first step you should be taking. What you can do is get your students to opt-in to
your campus services via text. Once they do you can reach out to them, connect
with them, share updates, reminders, and provide the necessary resources.
For example, you can display an ad (on your website
and social media) saying:
Text “CAMPUS” to 56887 to get personalized campus support services.
Once a student texts
the keyword send an automated reply saying something like this:
Thank for joining our text list! Expect to receive support services such as
academic counseling, financial aid, alumni mentorship and more.