Title of the proposal
A Layered Approach to Student Retention Interventions: Course Retention Coaching for Students and Faculty
Bio
Janey Flanagan
Janey Flanagan is the Director of E-Learning at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York. She has 17 years of experience directing distance and online higher education programs and eight years of higher education teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate level. She also serves as Director of BMCC’s 2.8 million Title V Hispanic Serving Institutions federal grant to build and assess the e-learning program.
Ms. Flanagan has worked to transform BMCC’s program through the adoption and implementation of a best practices for e-learning based on OLC’s five pillars. Her areas of expertise include general educational technology, online teaching pedagogy, games-based learning, digital storytelling, e-portfolios, e-learning assessment, and innovative uses of technology to improve student learning outcomes and persistence.
Ms. Flanagan is also a doctoral student at the City University of New York Graduate Center, pursuing her Ph.D. in Urban Education and Leadership.
General description of the initiative or project
E-Learning courses at BMCC leverage the strengths of multiple learning modalities and employ a variety of constructivist teaching techniques, combined with layered student retention interventions in order to maximize student persistence and learning outcomes. A primary goal of BMCC’s E-Learning program is to expand access to educational opportunities for Hispanic students while increasing student retention and academic success as indicated by improved course completion and pass rates in online and hybrid courses. Secondly, by improving access and success, the college aims to increase academic momentum and persistence toward degree completion by providing more flexibility through time and space, while creating a virtual community of inquiry for students.
New faculty professional development options, such as faculty peer retention coaching, focus on improving student learning outcomes, course retention, and overall persistence toward degree completion. BMCC online and hybrid faculty participate in specialized workshops and one-on-one retention coaching with a mentor. Experienced Master Online Faculty are paired with new faculty in order to encourage the innovative uses of digital pedagogies and learning management systems as an intervention and retention mechanism. Faculty explore pedagogical methods and learning theories applicable to e-learning, new digital innovations, as well as strategies to improve overall student performance and retention. For example, faculty discuss how to identify the behaviors of at-risk students and how to re-engage students who are not attending or underperforming.
Student services, an important component of improving course retention, is built in to already successful targeted programs aimed at improving student success. These services are layered with the E-Learning Center’s established student technology support services operating in the evenings and seven days a week. By layering services for online students throughout the college, BMCC is expecting to see significant improvements in its online learning completion and pass rates.