Prevent Student Drops

Orientations Contact Student Success

Online Student Self-Assessment

Encourage your students to use the Online Learning Self-assessment questionnaire BEFORE they register for your fully online class. This questionnaire will give your students an idea whether or not they have the personality traits, learning aptitude, technical knowledge, hardware and software, and study skills for online learning.

Online Learning

The Introduction to Online Learning video (10:46 mins) offers an overview as to how online learning works, how courses are set up, what tools are generally used, what is expected of you, how interaction takes place, and how to succeed online.

Online Canvas Student Orientation

Encourage your students to step through an online Canvas student orientation.

Canvas Student Orientation course - Small Canvas course tutorial. May be accessed from within Canvas from the Help menu (first item in the list)
Canvas Student Tour - Series of short videos (total viewing time ~35 mins)

On-campus Student Canvas Orientation

Encourage your students to attend an on-campus student orientation to Canvas session which are scheduled during the first week of each quarter.

Online Learning Student Orientation Schedule - Get dates and location

Welcome Message for Students

Be sure to send a Welcome Message to your enrolled students sometime during the week before the start of the upcoming quarter.

Use the 'Student Welcome Message' template to craft a message for your students. The template has:

Links to Canvas online and in-person orientations
Describes how to log in to Canvas
Links on how to troubleshoot Canvas/Etudes issues
How to get tech support by submitting a helpdesk ticket
Be sure to tell your students what they need to do in order to avoid being dropped for non-attendance (e.g., post to the Discussion Forum at least once).

Canvas Student Welcome Message (docx)

If you want to send a Welcome message to your enrolled students BEFORE the quarter starts and before you have published your Canvas course, you need to use your class list in MyPortal instead of Announcements in Canvas. This is because you cannot send Announcements to students until you have "published" your Canvas course site. But you should NOT "publish" your live Canvas course site until you are really ready because you cannot "unpublish" it.

When sending the message to your students from MyPortal, please be careful to ONLY include enrolled students and not waitlisted students in your mailing list.

Individual Contact

Research indicates that online students are more likely to complete courses when they have experienced individual contact with their instructors, even if it is only once during the session. This can be done via telephone, Skype, or in-person.

Teaching Elements: Instructor-to-Student Interaction Online (pdf) - Innovative Learning Institute
How Students Develop Online Learning Skills - Article By Alan R. Roper from Educause Quarterly (Volume 30 Number 1 2007). Successful online students share their secrets for getting the most from online classes, focusing on:
- Time management
- Active participation
- Practice

Online Learning
ANYTIME • ANYWHERE