Persistence rates in higher education haven’t improved over the last two decades and though student retention is obviously a key success factor, alone it isn’t a sufficient determinant of success for higher education institutions (Caruth, 2018). Yet, for first-year student (FYS) educators in courses such as those I teach, building student persistence and increasing retention is a primary goal. This is for good reason, because that persistence is necessary for incoming students to stay the course along a lengthy academic path. Understandably, FYS face a daunting challenge along with uncertainties, life demands, and self-doubt that can undermine even the most committed student’s intentions and efforts. Their needs are somewhat different from those of more seasoned students and require a different set of pedagogical techniques from educators.
The literature holds no shortage of prescribed techniques to help support FYS in finding their “sea legs” and the introductory course offered by most institutions is one important element designed for this very purpose. A technique I want to highlight here is telephone outreach and to do that, I’ll ask you to follow me back to a stop along my career path before I entered higher education.
I worked in professional media sales and I recall an experience from one role of promoting online classified advertising to automotive dealerships. Our organization regularly provided seminars designed to educate dealership staff, such as Internet Sales Managers, on how to effectively convert online customer leads to actual sales. The presenter was fantastic; he was knowledgeable, personable and charismatic, self-aware, and very intelligent. I would sit in those seminars and soak up as much as I could knowing that it would help me help my clients’ staff members achieve sales goals through purchasing my organization’s services. Of all the knowledge I gained from his presentations, one still resonates with me to this day and is quite applicable to my role as an online educator.
He explained that few people will ever purchase a vehicle solely through the Internet. In other words, don’t look for customers to conveniently lend themselves to a sales process of going from initial interest in a vehicle all the way through to purchasing it by email, chat, or any other communication via website only. This was poignant; back in 2004 we were all still trying to figure out how to build a successful model for marketing and merchandising vehicles through the Internet. If customers wouldn’t be willing to convert to closed sales through the Internet, then why should an automotive dealership make sizeable investments of time and money into the endeavor altogether?
His answer was this: You have to get the customer outside of the box, the box being the computer. Car sales, in spite of the new technologies becoming available to market to prospective customers, hadn’t really changed after all. In order to make the investment of a vehicle purchase, customers would still need to hear a voice, make some type of connection upon which to build trust with a salesperson. He explained that dealership staff members needed to set that level of communication as the first goal when responding to customer leads coming in via the Internet. One must be willing to walk through the sales cycle patiently, and equally as important, personably with prospective customers. This walk couldn’t be conducted through mere text on a screen. Pick up the phone and reach out.
At a time when the Internet was all the rage and the new technologies it brought were going to transform the automotive sales industry, who would have thought that the good old-fashioned telephone would be so critical? Wasn’t the Internet supposed to replace traditional communication channels and make automotive sales easier, faster, and less expensive from a time investment perspective? Many in the industry that had certainly hoped this would be the case came to find the error of this line of thought.
While it is true that some FYS don’t want, nor need, that telephone contact, it’s quite common to find many of them need that additional support. From teaching online introductory courses for well over a decade, I can recall countless examples of struggling students that likely would have withdrawn without the personable intervention I provided through telephone outreach. Though it’s not surprising to me, I’m still amazed at the power of the human voice. I say, half-kiddingly, that some of my students were surprised to find that their instructor was a real human being! Never underestimate the impact of voice-to-voice communication, particularly within a learning environment built upon a foundation that is inherently devoid of the natural elements of human interaction as we’ve come to know it over the centuries.
First-year student persistence is significantly affected by the level of interaction they experience with their instructors (Wismath & Newberry, 2019). Naturally, the quality and degree of that interaction yields commensurate outcomes. Try as we may, there is a limit to how personable we can make our written communication. We can dress that communication up with images and photographs, record and deliver video communication in which we enthusiastically convey emotion, and make ourselves readily available for online text chats. However, none of that is a true substitute for students hearing our voice, in real-time, responding to their concerns and addressing their needs.
Without question, telephone outreach can require a significant time investment from an educator just as it does for an Internet Sales Manager at an automotive dealership. This demand can be mitigated by organization, planning, and a well-constructed process, however. The key point is that regardless of the time investment required, there is great power in our voice, a power that can turn around a struggling student and help him or her build persistence within self, and confidence in the distance education model.
I don’t see a substitute. Regardless of what you say, remember that the act of voice-to-voice communication will have a positive impact on your students. The mere act of hearing your voice can resonate with your students in myriad ways whether you’re offering suggestions on how to overcome challenges or simply giving them a pat on the back for a job well done. There is also the opportunity to get to know your students better. It begins simply with your voice and can lead to many, many wonderful things for your students. Are you reaching out to your students via telephone? How effective have your telephone outreach efforts been? What approach do you take to telephone outreach? I’d love to hear from you! Add your thoughts in a comment below or email me at the address listed in the footer section.
References
Wismath, S., and Newberry, J. (2019). Mapping Assets: High-Impact Practices and the First- Year Experience. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 7(1), 34–54. https://doi-org.contentproxy.phoenix.edu/10.20343/teachlearninqu.7.1.4
Caruth, G. g. (2018). Student Engagement, Retention, and Motivation: Assessing Academic Success in Today’s College Students. Participatory Educational Research,5(1), 17-30. doi:10.11203/per.18.4.5.1.