State U Online: More Online Courses Demand Online Support

Guest post by Mandy Zatynski

Officials at eCore, the University System of Georgia’s online curriculum, collect heaps of student data every year: individual course completion rates, withdrawal rates, and even the number of those identified as at-risk each semester.

Every day, Melanie Clay, dean of eCore, says she looks at the dropout rate and compares it to the rate at the same time last year. “If it’s not going in the direction we want it to be going in, then we … try to analyze why until we figure out why,” she told me when I visited her office at the University of West Georgia last fall. It could be the online platform (Is it user friendly?), the instructor (Is s/he responsive?), or the student success adviser – the person tasked with calling (yes, on the telephone – twice, then regular contacts by email) every student identified as at-risk. The student success adviser has to be caring, but convincing. Dean Clay knows online courses are just as important as face-to-face courses, even though it’s easier to forget about them.

The work of Clay’s student success team, and Georgia’s eCore program generally, are highlighted in State U Online, a report co-released this week by Education Sector and the New America Foundation. The report, authored by Rachel Fishman, makes seven policy recommendations for sustainable, online public higher education systems. One of them is student support.

I’ve already highlighted eCore’s student success team, which contacts students who have missed assignments, failed exams, or haven’t logged into the course for one week. As a result, the University of West Georgia has seen online retention reach as high as 92 percent in one semester. (Overall, eCore’s retention rate is 83 percent.)

But student support comes in various ways. My colleague, Ben Wildavsky, has written about ongoing efforts to use text messages to remind students about upcoming assignments and generally keep them on task. And Fishman, in her report, points to the Florida Virtual Campus, a one-stop shop for any online student within the State University System of Florida or Florida College System. There, students – regardless of their “home” campus – can find advising or other support services applicable to their coursework.

It’s important to remember the additional challenges that come with online learning, from the need for superb reading and comprehension abilities to stellar time management and self-motivation skills. Online students shouldn’t be expected to go at it alone, simply because they have chosen a different delivery method for their education. As universities grow their online offerings, schools should expand their infrastructure to support their online students as well as their on-campus ones.

Mandy Zatynski is a writer/editor for Education Sector.

This post is crossposted at The Quick and the Ed.