What do you find is the biggest challenge students face in starting-and then continuing-their UMGC experience?

One of the things we heard frequently in our new student surveys is that they have low confidence in their ability to master the technological aspects of online learning. To address that, we provided that feedback data to the Tutoring Services & Resources office, and they hired classroom technology tutors who are trained to help students master that aspect. We're also working to create a new PACE offering that builds that technology-readiness piece right in, because it is a struggle for some of our learners.

With PACE and FYE morphing so quickly, how do the teachers stay current?

A lot of these changes came from faculty ideas, but we have around 600 adjunct faculty teaching PACE, so it's a large volume. We can't closely monitor what's happening in 600 different sections, but we can use our real-time dashboards to look at faculty performance and engagement. And then we have faculty coaches who have taught the course before and can offer feedback. It's an opportunity for them to have a leadership role, and they have been instrumental in helping us raise the bar. We also work closely with the Office of Student Success and our Digital Student Experience team to understand the student perspective with the hope of initiating proactive support.

Have you found any trends in the data you've collected that identify when students are most likely to be successful?

Yes, and we have visuals to illustrate this in both PACE and Virtual Orientation. "Happy Path" is a strategy that promotes taking PACE as the first course and two classes in session I and two in session III, so that none of their classes overlap. Students who do this seem to hit the sweet spot. A lot of students, especially just starting out, don't realize that at UMGC, session II straddles both session I and III. If they don't realize that overlap, students can get overwhelmed pretty quickly. That's one of the many reasons we encourage them to take PACE first. Encouraging students to follow the Happy Path strategy, along with providing course suggestions, yields higher student success and a faster path to graduation. Additionally, learners who complete Virtual Orientation have higher GPAs, increased course success rates, and increased retention, when compared to those who don't complete it.

Read more about the first year experience on the UMGC blog: UMGC Gives First-Year Students Tools to Succeed.