A post by Cristina Mancigotti, Capacity Development Coordinator at UNU-MERIT’s Capacity Development Office Students consider dropping out of courses for a number of reasons, but our research shows that peer discussions and local context examples during class sessions can increase engagement and completion rates in online courses. Challenges for online students and educators During the course of an interview, we were not surprised to hear a student telling us that they considered droppin...
A joint post by Dr. Mindel van de Laar and Katerina Triantos. There’s a first time for everything. Recently, in partnership with the Dutch government and the SURF organisation, we’ve developed online courses to help students choose their tracks (the basic idea is that if they’re better informed from the start, they’re less likely to drop out). We piloted SMART Choices in the autumn of 2017 – and with some success, according to the student evaluations. We’ve now moved on to the SMART Tools part o...
A joint post by Shivani Achrekar and Dr. Mindel van de Laar. In e-learning courses, fully online or blended, the biggest challenge for course providers is to ensure retention, allowing participants to finish their online course. While sign-up rates can look promising, drop-out rates are often high, and completion rates could be improved. Our blended learning programme in Evidence-Based Policy Research Methods (EPRM), designed for working professionals, is no exception to the rule. The course des...