Ever wondered how to engage with students or what is preventing their success? Have you emailed and posted grading feedback, without any meaningful student response? CTU Messenger provides a lens into what students are experiencing. Direct messaging provides insight into their challenges and opportunities to guide students toward success.
Higher education has long been challenged with capturing minds and elevating knowledge and skills. Universities and colleges invest in developing the best curriculum and providing necessary and appropriate student support. Yet, despite award-winning classrooms, outstanding faculty, and unwavering student support, student persistence and performance often fail to meet expectations. A key component is missing. Engagement is the heart of student success and persistence. It is not enough to provide stellar lessons; it is vital for faculty to connect, on a personal and professional level, with each student. This personalized connection energizes students and instills a feeling that someone cares about them, that they are not alone on this journey. This connection has never been more important than during the isolation felt because of the COVID pandemic.
Faculty have long been aware that connection is important. Multiple strategies have been attempted. Faculty fervently post course announcements and send individualized emails. They engage in discussion forums and promptly answer student questions. Some faculty hold virtual lectures and office hours. Many even offer their phone numbers, hoping that students will reach out if they need help. Yet, with all these tools available and widely used, faculty and student support are failing to meaningfully move the needle on student success and persistence.
Effective communication creates personal connection. Creating and sustaining individualized connection in an online classroom environment is elusive. Effective communication solicits emotion and touches individuals on an emotional level. It is more than exchanging information; it is about understanding the emotion and intent behind the information. Effective communication inspires student responses and engagement, resulting in student persistence and success.
CTU Messenger is a proven method of effective student engagement. CTU Messenger is a direct message communication tool that emulates text messaging. The messages go directly to the student’s mobile devices and online classroom. Students can respond to the messages the same way one responds to text messages, quickly and effectively. Conversely, the instructor can easily engage with students proactively as well as answering their questions, in real time. This tool allows faculty and student services to engage with students using a method that is familiar and preferred by students. Because the communication method is familiar and trusted, students are more willing to share their challenges, both personal and academic, with faculty and student services. Notably, students share details about their course and personal challenges more frequently using CTU Messenger than they do through other forms of communication. Cultivating this type of student engagement is key to helping the students achieve success in the classroom. From a university standpoint, this engagement translates into student persistence and retention.
However, there have been many lessons learned on achieving successful engagement through CTU Messenger. Providing an effective communication tool is insufficient without effective faculty support and training. Faculty must know how to manage the technology and remain abreast of best practices in messaging, responding to messages, and conducting meaningful and timely outreach. Strategic, effective, and efficient message is the key to maintaining valuable engagement. Many of these skills are not intuitive. Because this is a different outreach medium for many, training is necessary. Sharing best practices is the key to optimizing the positive effects.
As always, there are barriers associated with change. Even when the positive outcomes are proven, there are hurdles to overcome in encouraging adoption and in solidifying effective use and engagement with students. This presentation discusses lessons learned on achieving successful engagement through CTU Messenger. Barriers to successful engagement are explored. The results of enhanced engagement and its effect on student success is quantified. Participants will leave the session with concrete methods for proven student engagement, strategies, and best practices for connecting with students, and methods for successfully onboarding faculty to participate in effective student engagement. Through these methods, attendees will learn strategies to enhance student persistence and success in the classroom.