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"Hersh believes there is another major factor driving the gap between retention rates in face-to-face programs and those in the rapidly growing world of distance education: the lack of a human touch."

"Fortunately, a group of tireless researchers-who I've had the honor of collaborating with-has put a wooden stake through the dark heart of this demon. In the most recent addition of the scientific journal Educational Technology, Deepak Subramony, Michael Molenda, Anthony Betrus, and I (my contribution was small) produced four articles on the dangers of this misinformation and the genesis of it. After working separately over the years to debunk this bit of mythology, the four of us have come together in a joint effort to rally the troops-people like you, dedicated professionals who want to create the best outcomes for your learners."

Of course the current big buzz in the LMS arena is analytics: over the past few years each and all of the LMS providers, on their own or in partnership with other firms, have announced an analytics strategy and analytic applications that allow faculty, departments, and institutions to leverage student transactional data extracted from the LMS for analytic purposes intended to aid student academic performance, course completion, student retention, and learning outcomes.

The White House has suggested that the amount of federal student aid that an institution receives should depend on how well it performs on certain key measures. I wholeheartedly agree with this in concept. The question is what those key measures should be. They should include rates of loan default, retention, and graduation. But not tuition.

"Instructional designers, trainers and educators have long realized the true value of animated videos as one of the main techniques that should be used to increase the audience's engagement and retention during an eLearning course. Would you be interested in a list of the top animated video software in the eLearning market?"

"Using a mix of skills in data engineering, analysis, and business intelligence, the Office focuses on analytics subject areas such as executive and academic program dashboards, marketing, enrollment management, retention, financials, and service centers. A service catalog includes predictive analytics, metrics dashboards, forecast modeling, Ad Hoc reporting, operational reporting, and variance analysis."

"Students who use OER find them to be accessible, relevant, and engaging. Over 60 percent of students reported that the overall quality of their learning experience in an OER course was higher in comparison to a typical, non- OER course. Though creating OER courses and degrees is time consuming, instructors in several colleges said they had made changes in instruction as a result of working with OER materials. Though few instructors made changes to their pedagogical practices specific to OER, use of these materials allowed them to align materials better with their learning goals. Instructors already using student-centered and hands-on learning strategies said that the OER materials helped what they were already doing. Several instructors also reported that students were more engaged with OER materials compared to textbooks, because they are better tailored to good pedagogy, reading materials are more relevant and interesting, and students can be more involved in the construction of the learning experience."

"These aren't necessarily a "yellow brick road to student success," - yet - the report noted; completion and retention rates for institutions reporting adoption of guided pathways were lower than those not reporting adoption of this approach."

"But what if, instead of giving students a handful of big exams-instead of struggling to shoehorn in a term's worth of material and asking students to pull all-nighters to cram-you give them frequent, low-stakes tests throughout the semester? "

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have the potential to enable free university-level education on an enormous scale. A concern often raised about MOOCs is that although thousands enrol for courses, a very small proportion actually complete the course. The release of information about enrollment and completion rates from MOOCs appears to be ad hoc at the moment - that is, official statistics are not published for every course. This data visualisation draws together information about enrollment numbers and completion rates from across online news stories and blogs.

Plenty of smart observers, however, say that the problem with Altius was its overreach, and that the system worked.

"In 2016, more than 40 percent of all students who started at a four-year college six years earlier had not yet earned a degree. Odds are that most of those students never will. In real terms, this means that nearly two million students who begin college each year will drop out before earning a diploma."