Over a three year period, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) lost 176 Online Graduate Students. With a growing student population, retention would worsen if left unaddressed. Over the past year, WPI increased its new online student retention by 19% via a new retention plan utilizing Salesforce providing just-in-time and personalized services.
After losing 176 Online Graduate Students over a three year period, along with an increase in student population, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) knew something needed to change. Over the past year, WPI has increased its new online student retention from 62% to 81%. How? Starting with a staff re-alignment, WPI identified and executed a retention plan to shift its methods for assisting students and streamline its processes. By re-evaluating everything from staffing structure to tools, WPI was able to create a just-in-time and personalized service system for all online students. In order to bring together key information from disparate systems and allow synergy with their counterparts in other departments, Salesforce was implemented as a key tool for success.
During the session, participants will learn how WPI’s retention plan was initiated and executed, along with challenges faced and successes to date. The WPI team will share an overview of how their retention strategy was successfully implemented, beginning with process-mapping the current and desired future state of student support, definition of critical points in the student’s education journey, identification of key touch-points along that path, opportunities for proactive outreach, and finally, the implementation of Salesforce to support the overall effort.
Upfront work in understanding the future process state and touch points involved in executing a retention strategy is critical. This lesson was invaluable, as without it, implementing a tool to meet the WPI team’s needs would have been disastrous. Within this process, WPI learned that full team buy-in is a must to ensure team member usage. Special attention was required to understand how frequently students received outreach and by which vehicle (email, phone, etc.). Email templates were reviewed to ensure appropriate length and content, along with the creation of a structure to provide needed support dependent on where the student is within their program lifecycle.
Where does WPI go from here? To understand success and next steps WPI created metrics associated with historic key attrition points within a student’s program cycle, including the number of students who move from their first course to second course, and tracking the reasons why students don’t continue. One key milestone to be discussed is the challenges involving retention reporting and how WPI is tackling how to pull data for online students separately versus manual tracking. To continue to understand the new retention strategy’s impact and how to continue to be responsive to student needs, an annual online student survey was created. This survey, now in its second year, has provided much feedback on what students need to be engaged and successful. One take-away from the survey was the need for an online community and during the session, WPI will briefly discuss the challenges associated with creating this community.
During the challenges discussion, participants will have time to share their experiences with similar or other issues related to improving online student retention. Participants will leave with keys to success for aiding in improving their processes and ultimately their overall retention. Session slides will be available after the presentation has ended.