Retention strategies for online students: A systematic literature review

The purpose of this paper is to examine online retention research in higher education over a 5-year span (January 2015–March 2019) to further advance research in higher education retention. Through an academic database search, 18 articles were collected from EBSCOhost, Google Scholar, and Research Gate using combinations of the keywords online, retention strategies, and higher education. All articles were analyzed for proposed retention strategies. Retention is a global topic. As such, this study demonstrates the importance of retention and clarifies issues or challenges students encounter, which may cause lower retention rates. The data reviewed suggest the most common retention issues or strategies involved student factors/motivation as well as faculty and student interactions. Common retention strategies most often included enhancing faculty training and/or support and adding student services positions and/or support.

Job Satisfaction and Its Influence on Faculty Retention and Turnover in a Private University in Liberia

Prior research declared that increased job satisfaction among faculty can explicitly influence behaviors and attitudes in faculty within institutions of higher education: retention, job performance, institutional commitment, engagement, among others. It is important that universities monitor the satisfaction levels of their faculty to secure increased levels of their performance. The qualitative, explanatory single case study was to explore how job satisfaction influence faculty retention and turnover in a private university in Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa. The need for qualified and committed faculty in Liberia continues to increase. To meet this need for high numbers of faculty, retention of qualified faculty has become a priority. The implication of this study is the importance of having effective leadership and healthy organizational culture to improve faculty morale and job satisfaction by developing strategies to retain quality faculty and reduce turnover.

Profiling Information and Communication Technologies

Perhaps the most basic decision that educators can make in communicating with students is what communication channel to use. Innovation profiles apply the classic attributes of an innovation—relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability—to new information and communication technologies to facilitate their successful implementation. Most importantly, as the author demonstrates in applying this concept to distance learning and teaching platforms, technology leaders can analyze technologies a priori to determine potential problems. Profiling the affordances offered by various communication channels will greatly facilitate the work of technology leaders as change agents charged with implementing technologies that confront the numerous challenges facing higher education: retention rates, affordability, and preparing students for the work world.

Factors that Influence Student Retention

With the increase in enrolment figures from second level education to third level education over the last number of decades, non-progression rates continue to give cause for concern in certain levels and disciplines. It has been widely argued that in addition to increasing enrolment numbers, higher education must also be concerned with the success of these students. In both the Irish and the international sector, the negative consequences of non-progression has been highlighted, not just on a societal level, but also for the students themselves. It is crucial for first-year student experience to have a positive experience and be fully supported in achieving the goals of higher education. From researching several reports in the area of retention and in particular the reports published by the Irish Higher Education Authority and the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in this area, it is clear that there is a need to analyse the data available and present the findings in a clear way to the key decision makers to allow for early intervention. This paper uses the different phases of the CRISP-DM methodology and applies data mining techniques and models to a real student dataset with the aim to predict the students that will progress. Keywords: Learning analytics; Data Mining; Higher Education; Retention.

White Institutional Presence: The Impact of Whiteness on Campus Climate

In this conceptual paper, Diane Gusa highlights the salience of race by scrutinizing the culture of Whiteness within predominately White institutions of higher education. Using existing research in higher education retention literature, Gusa examines embedded White cultural ideology in the cultural practices, traditions, and perceptions of knowledge that are taken for granted as the norm at institutions of higher education. Drawing on marginalization and discrimination experiences of African American undergraduates to illustrate the performance of White mainstream ideology,Gusa names this embedded ideology White institutional presence (WIP) and assigns it four attributes: White ascendancy, monoculturalism, White estrangement,and White blindness.