Penetration of smart devices in our society paired with Globalization has brought has online education or popularly known as eLearning.
Increase Student Retention for your Online Course
Today, the education sector has evolved from physical classrooms to virtual classrooms held in software. Even though the reach of the Internet and smart devices is unprecedented. Yet the online course completion rate is 40%.
Online courses are relatively more affordable and ever-present. So, what is stopping people from accessing it?
We can list out a few:
- Trouble getting in touch with the teacher or course instructor.
- A feeling of disconnect due to lack of physical presence.
- Feeling that the education quality is not what was promised.
- Students are too busy or stressed.
We got some solutions for you if you think this is the same with your online course-selling website or marketplace.
Improve your student retention in 4 steps:
1. E-mail Reminders for Low Attendance
Drip emailing marketing is a common marketing tactic. Here you send repetitive series of emails to customers whom you are on the brink of losing. You do this to re-engage your prospective buyer or an existing customer with your customer.
In an education setting, you send emails when a customer hasn’t:
- Logged in to their e-learning portal for a couple of days.
- He/She has missed a few lessons.
- They failed to submit an assignment.
- Discussion post-class activity is low from their end.
2. Create personalized content for your students
Your lesson content decides how capable are you of retaining your students. If your content is very generic, then no matter the tactics you employ you can not get a renewal or stop the member from going elsewhere.
Your content should be very Targeted at the specific interests of your members. Personalized learning showcases your clear understanding of the needs and goals of each student as an individual. Quality content with a targeted personalization approach can create an exponential increase in student performance, renewal, and retention
You can easily personalize your lessons if you:
- Make a poll to find the interests and expectations of students from your course material.
- Get to know your students at the start of your course.
- Provide a medium of self-assessment for your students.
3. SMS Reminders
Solving the communication problem is easy-peasy. Communication is widely done via email. But SMS has 98% open rate compared to just 25% of emails. And it takes only a minute to reply to a text while an email can take anywhere from 9 to 90 minutes.
More than 96% of Americans own a cellphone, whereas 61.78% of people own a smartphone or a feature phone worldwide. As texting is a two-way communication platform, both the instructors and the students can communicate. Making it an efficient way of sharing feedback and asking questions.
Also Read: Steps To Grow Your Email Marketing List
4. Increase Social Interactions
One of the most documented and talked about drawbacks of eLearning is the lack of physical touch. Which leads to a feeling of disconnection among the students. What we suggest you do is hold more social interactions in your virtual classroom.
Studies have shown that students who participated in interactive group activities scored a final exam grade nine percent higher than the students who didn’t.
You can also:
- Create discussion groups.
- Have group assignments.
- Mid-lesson poll.
- Encourage virtual hand-raising.
Final Words
Having a consistent student base is necessary for any eLearning website. If you don’t make sure that you are posting a good number in terms of retention. You can say goodbye to your online learning website. We hope you will use the tips mentioned above and post a good number day-in and out. If you still need any assistance, drop us a comment and we will get back to you.
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