A very simple way to address retention and online courses is my in the very first week identifying those tunes that had not submitted any work. Obviously, there is a issue which is preventing them from addressing their original goal.
We created a form that is called "Early Alert" that we use in this way: As soon as an instructor perceives that a student is starting to do poorly in class or feels he is losing motivation, the instructor fills out this form with the student and explain that because he is important for us and his performance is part of what he is feeling, we want to help him sending him to a couple of tutoring sessions that could help him to boost his knowledge and at the end his motivation for the class. We have very good results and great response from the students. This practice has helped us a lot with retention.
