Educational Institutions’ Improvement of Student Persistence via Customer Service Practices Used in Business and Information Technology Industries

Audience Level: 
All
Institutional Level: 
Higher Ed
Abstract: 

Voice and choice of students should drive the design of Learning and Content Management Systems (LMS/CMS) used in higher education.  Expected is an increase in student persistence by creating a CMS/LMS that looks and feels like Internet sites students use in their daily lives, such as Amazon or Facebook.

Extended Abstract: 

There is a significant gap in the study of the impact of learning on student retention and efficacy when given are students’ choice and voices in the development of Learning and Content Management Systems. Think of a favorite Internet website, such as Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay.  Users will find few pain points on these websites created and adapted for ease of use.  Information Technology (IT) Industries are nimble in responding to customer voice to give the user choices.  Responsiveness to customer voice is the primary reason users continue to return to the website; thus, persistence occurs because the website design makes it easy for users to glean the desired information (whether that be content or commodities).

This presentation will include participant discussion of expected impact when heard, are students’ voices in the choice of design of the LMS/CMS. After a detailed meta-analysis of the literature, we firmly believe that creating an LMS/CMS that looks and feels like e-commerce or social media sites the students are familiar will have a positive impact on student persistence.  Students would not have a learning curve for an LMS/CMS intuitively structured similar to other successful customer websites, such as Facebook, Amazon, eBay, JetBlue because students could access using any device with few pain points.

The goal of this presentation is thus, to facilitate awareness of how LMS/CMS design and deployment, impacts student persistence.  

Session Type: 
Education Session - Panel Discussion