At Academic Partnerships, one of our main foci is student retention. What does this mean exactly? Jason Elliott, Director of Student Services states,

“Retention programs that work in the online environment are those where an emotional attachment is created between the students and their university. Beyond the classroom, online students need to feel valued, understood, and heard. This is imperative to the long-term success of each student; it is also the precise goal of our student coordinators at Academic Partnerships. As each student progresses toward graduation, they are partnered with a student coordinator. Each student coordinator uses a highly specified process to keep students motivated and persisting towards graduation. As a result, each online student is encouraged, empowered, and connected to their school in a way that would be impossible without a student coordinator.”

You may be asking yourself, “How does this affect me as a professor?” Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we take a dive into the topic of retention and how you can improve retention as a professor.