Sherry Olsen – Article.
The online division at Keiser University serves 21 campuses throughout the state of Florida, along with our campuses in Nicaragua and China. Students at Keiser University can take their courses in different modalities, face-to-face, hybrid, or fully online. Over the last decade, especially post-COVID, there has been a steady increase in the number of students enrolled in online education. The increasing popularity and growth in online education can be largely attributed to the wide variety of advantages it affords to students and institutions. Our Latin Division offers associate, baccalaureate, master, and doctoral degrees completely in Spanish making us a top Hispanic serving institution. We have been recognized for our excellence in distance education by earning the Catalyst award for the past four years in a row for Student Success, Training and Professional Development, Leading Change, and Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness.
Learners benefit from increased flexibility, convenience, and access, while institutions benefit from the opportunity to increase enrollments and expand their reach to a more diverse population of students. Students want a choice in how they receive their education with a combination of face-to-face courses, hybrid, and fully online courses.
To succeed in running an online division, there needs to be high student engagement and a feeling of social connectedness. Student engagement is a vital component to student retention. Adequate student-student interaction and student-professor interaction are two key elements for fostering student engagement and social connectedness. Small class sizes allow faculty to provide asynchronous and synchronous lectures on a weekly basis, provide extra help and tutoring, call students to check in, and the ability to respond to students within a 24-hour timeframe, 7 days a week.
Having a robust learning analytic program is also key to the success of online students. An early intervention approach to retention, using robust reports helps students stay in school and succeed. We developed robust analytic dashboards for advisors, faculty, deans, and administrators to support data-driven decision making which led to the development of more effective and accurate strategies that significantly improved student achievement and success.
Although online students often deal with a different set of challenges than traditional learners, it does not mean they require less support. To meet the needs of online learners, online departments and support centers must be built differently and tailored to the online environment. Institutional efforts should include a diverse set of offerings that are developed to provide ongoing support, enhance the student experience, and improve learning outcomes.
Ensuring departmental members are accessible when online learners need them helps cultivate continuous engagement and support with students. Academic support centers, such as those for mathematics, writing, or speech, as well as program-specific services, help promote student success and persistence through graduation.
As the demand for online education continues to grow around the globe, it is imperative that administrators and educators take strides to mitigate the high attrition rates of online students. Attrition is a multivariate issue that requires a multifaceted solution. Better advisement and contact leads to higher student satisfaction by increasing student contact and interventions. Administrators must implement solid well planned out strategies if they wish to have a strong online environment. Being able to use a robust data analytic system that turns into actionable items is a game changer in helping students stay in school and graduate.
