We have different groups of racers come to our school during bike week for activities , this is something that the students get excited about and helps them get involved with other students.different types of racers , dirt track racers, drag racers, appeal to diferent students and gets them talking to each other about what they anticipate for the future.
A challenge we face at our school is that the students don't have much if any time outside of class to participate in any school activities. We do have a few events during the course of the year during the normal business hours that keep things fun and interesting.
Perfect. Lessons pointed to career success makes a huge difference! I love what you are doing.
Dr. B
Relate everything you teach to their future employment. Tell them why everything is important. Let the students know at the end of the day what they will be doing the next day and clearly state the expectation at the beginning of the next class.
You should never have "Self-study" or downtime in the classroom. They can stay home and read the book! Make each minute in the classroom worth something. Be creative and find alternative ways to teach a skill or topic. I use the real government websites the students will deal with in their careers, I have them complete short educational courses on the websites and print out certificates of achievement, it looks good on their resumes and the students enjoy the variety. They are not graded work but they help build good skills.
When absent students come back they are always told by the other students about the interesting activities they missed. I also make it a point to not go back and allow the absent students to make up the interesting activity. In this way, I believe there are incentives for coming to school each day. You can not retain them if you can not get them to show up each day.
Retention should be on going, that is the studients instructor and the staff in general must continue to follow through daily.
Get everyone involed with student activities
What types of things do you give as rewards. On our campus we had a huge holiday door contest but we can't really give them anything so all they got were some ribbons. I would love to hear ideas about other rewards for students that don't break the rules.
This is always more of a challenge for online students. Since face-to-face contact is usually not possible, it is important to build community through robust disussions, emails and announcements on a regular basis and social networking opportunities.
We have many student activities each quarter and try to shake it up a little bit each term with different events. Here is a sampling:
-Movie Days
-Popcorn Days
-Talent Competition
-Shoe styling/decorating party
-Drum Circle
-Blood Drive
-Habitat for Humanity group volunteer project
-Volunteer Fair
-Autumn Showcase (student work on display)
-Awards Ceremony each term for President's List, Dean's List and Perfect Attendance
-Fashion Show
-Interviewing/Resume building seminar
We have recently added a couple of new activities to increase student retention.
We have added a “pizza†meet and greet two days after orientation. The invitee goes out to
the new students who start the following Monday. Also, to the new students who just start
3 weeks earlier. We invite leaders as well as instructors to get folks to meet early in the process.
We have a “open house†activity the weekend before the meet and greet. This gives the
new students a chance to sit in a 2.5 hour class (simulates a normal class). They receive a
tour of the dyno and participate in a “spark plug†challenge which develops a little friendly
competition with our other two programs.
For Halloween we invited students and their children to participate in Karaoke. Each office also distributed candy to the children. It was a great event to integrate staff and students (and their families) together.
Once tallied, our school has an incredible number of ways to get students involved and help retention.We have:
On site career fairs
Part time and full time job placement
Recognition for student of the course and attendance awards at graduation
Career newsletters
Unlimited instructor tutoring and student to student tutoring
Discount tickets for area events
Free dragstrip race day for student cars
Spirit week with several different themes
Food pantry
Information kiosk in the hallway
Involvement in several different community service venues that benefit children
A "full service" student services department
The challenge comes to get the student to paricipate in all these wonderful things. Many need help in learning how to make use of all the tools thrown at them and come from backgrounds where someone else did it for them, up to this point.
In our school we have a program called driven. It consists of students who have had differant courses and done well in them, and now they help struggling students going through the same course
Some ideal school activities to increase student retention can be the following:
1. An established carpool program that would benefit students with transportation problems.
2. Socials for students on Fridays to get more invloved with school activities like open houses, college week, group tutorials, etc.
3. Active department clubs headed by student ambassadors and certain activities like fundraising and in-house benefits (like field trips, others).
4. Wider coverage of the college work study, both on-campus and around the community.
5. More open houses with informational sessions to educate the families of the students to help them understand the challenges their students go through while in school.
Fun always helps. Why? You build relationships and a relationship equates to trust.
Dr. B
I am finding that the fun involvement is key to their comfort as well as their ability to bond with their classmates as well as their instructor.
Our students have an opporutnity to interact with the campus president and other senior managers of the campus at several functions each quarter. They also have opportunities to join clubs and participate in social events with members of faculty and other leaders from the university. The biggest challenge we face is finding events which will be well supported and of interest to our students; most of which are working adults.
Student clubs
Picnics (including family)
Holiday celebrations (including family)
Awards programs (based on attendance, grade point average, etc.)
Games
Races
We are a culinary college so the list will revolve around activities we conduct at our college specifically.
1) Recipe contest - This engages all students to pariticpate towards the thrill of having their recipe as the lunch special for the college for a day.
2) Movie mixer - We have a projector screen and have students come to enjoy a movie with popcorn for an afternoon (for our evening students) or the evening (for our morning students).
3) Spirit week - We let the uniform standards slide a little and allow for the students to creatively dress their uniforms (Chef Hats, pants and jackets) in a way that correlates to the theme of the week.
4) Class attendance award - We offer a class prize (lunch or dinner in the restaurant with chefs) for the class who has the best attendance for a term.
These our some of our retention strategies that build upon the social fabric between the students and the college.
Thanks,
Shawn Wenner
Many times, students can't link what they are learning to the job they want. So, to improve motivation, link to careers. This will help you.
Dr. B
