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Online degree pathways continue to gain popularity and public favor while other areas of higher education face enrollment declines and skepticism - a sentiment that has led two-thirds of colleges to add more online programs. For institutions hoping to differentiate themselves in the market, however, there's still opportunity to stand out to prospective students and increase the persistence and retention for those already enrolled.
On September 21, 2023, we invited the University of Arizona Online's executive and student success teams to discuss how they've successfully grown enrollment by double digits each year since 2018 and how providing every student with a relevant peer mentor is helping retain students as much as it attracts them.
Read on to get our key takeaways or take a look at the full conversation.
"I think our growth is completely intertwined not just with new students, but serving the students we already have. Yes, it's about bringing in new students, but if the students we already have are going out the back door as quickly as they came in, then we have a problem. The national averages across the online space are somewhere around 55 percent for attrition. So we're thinking about how we grow and how we maintain an investment into the student success team, ensuring that students feel like they are part of the community, and that they're achieving their goals."
Online Learners Want to Hear from Peers Who Have Succeeded
The most recent CHLOE 8 report highlights that while online institutions have built a strong infrastructure for learners' technical and academic needs, they have yet to explore and further develop what online community building looks like and how it addresses the psychosocial needs of online learners. Arizona Online saw this in undergraduate and graduate student surveys and built a student success framework that included a focus on reimagining community in a way that empowered their students to achieve their desired educational goals while fostering a sense of belonging as a Wildcat.
"It's about translating elements of the in-person student experience into ways that are accessible virtually for our student population who are Wildcats from anywhere. Initiatives like MentorCats offer us a really important tool in which to help foster that."
- Dr. Carmin Chan, Senior Director of Student Success Initiatives at Arizona Online
Peer Mentorship Contributes to Increased Retention & Sense of Belonging
Within this scaffolding was a need to find a solution that addressed all of the institution's student success goals and could grow alongside enrollment. In 2022, Arizona Online collaborated with Mentor Collective to configure a scalable mentorship platform that would allow all undergraduate students studying online the opportunity to engage with a relevant peer mentor.
Peer mentorship is a proven high-impact practice shown to positively affect several leading indicators of student persistence – including sense of belonging and academic self-efficacy. Within Mentor Collective's technology, the Arizona Online team had a means of assessing these magic metrics and reaching students with resources through their peers and an easily accessed central dashboard.
"It's about peer-to-peer connections. We're not expecting our mentors to be paraprofessionals who know everything about the university. That's not the point. The point is about student-to-student connections, having somebody who they can build an authentic relationship with, and then helping those mentors have a toolkit of resources. We've worked together with Mentor Collective to provide that, and they can access the resources and information to help get that student either flagged and on our radar or connected to the right resource at the right time." – Dr. Carmin Chan, Senior Director of Student Success Initiatives at Arizona Online
In the first semester, the MentorCats program engaged 20 percent of the undergraduate population; among them nearly 200 student mentors that were trained and provided resources on the Mentor Collective student dashboard. Since program launch, Arizona Online expanded MentorCats to all incoming graduate students as well.
The impact of the inaugural year was felt on an individual student level and bubbled up to impact broader online learner retention:
"We saw dramatic increases in our retention rates, which we attribute to a variety of factors and initiatives, but there was a disproportionately positive effect for populations who were part of the MentorCats program. Our first-time, full-time retention rate increased by almost 22 percent year over year up to just shy of 70 percent, which is really amazing. We also saw increases across the board for our first-time, part-time population, our transfer, full-time population, and transfer part-time population." – Dr. Carmin Chan, Senior Director of Student Success Initiatives at Arizona Online
The First-Year of Online Learning Still Requires Navigational Guidance
Senior Success Coach Heidi Creel also felt the impact of the program within her role to ensure students feel supported by the institution en route to their academic, credential, and degree goals.
When you think about asynchronous online education, there's a lot of isolation for students. They can't just turn to the student next to them and ask them a question...Having a Mentor can help them understand that there's a whole network of support built in at the University of Arizona to help you. We match students based on their different interests, so our mentees and mentors are able to connect about whatever they want, and our mentees are learning that there's other people like them here in the online program. They're not alone. There are resources to help them out." – Heidi Creel, Senior Success Coach at Arizona Online
Like many in Heidi's role, time is a valuable commodity, and the support of Mentor Collective's technology and service is allowing her to facilitate meaningful interactions with students, provide timely responses to needs, and encourage leadership skills in mentors. Mentors in the program are encourages to log conversation topics and peer-alerts (known as "Flag") to provide Heidi with insight into the student experience and drive referrals to prominent student resources.
"For us to implement this large of a mentorship program without Mentor Collective really would have been difficult, maybe impossible because we don't have a staff member who's only role is to do the mentorship program. Because we have Mentor Collective as a partner, they're doing a lot of that logistical work like matching students and presenting a lot of data for us. I can really focus on working with those students." – Heidi Creel, Senior Success Coach at Arizona Online
For more information on the Arizona Online MentorCats program and how it fits into the institution's broader plans for enrollment growth, watch the recording of the full event or reach out to us to discuss how you can design a mentorship platform fitted to your desired student outcomes!