Features of the Ideal Online Course to Prevent Drop Outs

When you are designing an online course, you would want the students of that online course to complete the course. But, you will be astonished to know that a large number of students who join a course end up leaving it mid-way.

Now, there are many reasons why students opt to drop out of the course and while designing an online course, you have to address those issues. Here are some of those issues that a student face while pursuing an online course;

• Problems with technology
• The lack of competition
• Becoming demotivated easily
• Struggling with student support
• The course design is very poor
• Instructors are very bad or inexperienced
• Failing to Adapt to the new style of learning

Now, when you are designing the course, you have to keep all these issues in your mind. Unless you address these issues, you will see a lot of students joining your online course but leaving it without completing it.

You would never want that to happen. But, you will be wondering how you can solve these problems of the students while designing the course. So, in this article, let’s check X features that you should have in your online course so that you prevent student dropouts very easily.

1. Give Time to the Students to Get Used to the Software

Anyone who is starting to use new software will need time to get used to it. Now, in online education, the students need to understand the use of software by using which they will study. Unless they know how to navigate the software and use its various options, they will get confused. And, this confusion will lead them to leave the course. So, while designing keep this factor in mind and allow the students to have some time to understand the software they will use for study.

2. Encourage the Students to Learn More about the Topic and Share It with You

You would have to encourage your students in learning more. This is one of the mistakes that most instructors make. They design the course without even question how they can make their students encourage learning about the topic more. So, what you can do is, give them questions at the end of each session and tell your students to find their answers and share them with you in the next session. When you tell them to share the answer with you, your students will become very much motivated to find out the answer and learn more about the topic which will eventually make them interested in the subject.

3. Give Space to the Students to Discuss the Topic with the Instructor

One of the major drawbacks of many online courses is that once the lesson is done, the instructor will not be communicating with the students. You have to remember that the students want to learn more. So, they want the instructors to clear their confusion. Thus, when they find that the instructor is not helping them out, they leave the course. Therefore, while designing the course, make sure you leave a time-space where the instructor could interact with the students to clear their confusions. This instructiveness of the course will encourage the students to pursue it and complete the course.

4. Help the Students in Setting up Realistic Expectations from the Course

When a student enrols for a particular course, he has a goal in mind. He or she wants to fulfil a dream maybe. However, as a student, his or her vision may not be clear. Many students will not know which courses are good enough to lead them towards their dream career. That is why before joining the course, you should transparently tell the students what they can expect from the course. There should not be any unrealistic expectations in their minds because when such expectations don’t get fulfilled, a student will be compelled to drop out of the course.

5. Ensure that the Content of the Course is Relevant to the Students

While designing a course, you have to be a bit subtle. You should have a deep understanding of the topic in which you are designing the course. Also, in most of the online courses, students find plenty of irrelevant content which does not go with the topic. You cannot have irrelevant topics in your course material. Crisply design the course so that students will know only the things they should know to fulfil their goals. If there is a student who wants to learn more, he will find a way to do it. That is why it is important to avoid overloading the course with information.

6. Make the Students Understand the Topics by Using Simple Explanations

In your online class, you will find students of different IQ levels. They all want to understand what the instructor will be teaching them. Now, if the instructor use jargons and technical terms more while explaining the topic, only a handful of the students in the class will understand what the instructor is teaching. That is why make sure that the course is designed in a way that the students will learn the topics with simple explanations. And for that, avoiding jargons is one of the main things.

7. Use Relevant Videos and Images to Explain the Topic

Every student loves to learn interactively. For that, using pictures and videos in the course for understanding the topic will be very important. Remember, the picture and videos should be of high-quality and should load quickly. Also, it adds a fun element to the course which will motivate the students to complete the course.

The Bottom Line

Finally, designing an online course is not an easy job and instructors have found that out with the rapid rise of the dropout rates. So, if you are designing an online course and want your students to complete the course after joining it, then make sure you follow the aforementioned points as it will guide you towards creating an online course that your students would love to pursue.