Hotel biz thoughts: How immediacy and multimedia contribute to student retention, customer experience

Regardless of a school’s organizational structure, non-profit or for-profit, retaining students is quite challenging these days. Traditional higher education schools are competing with blue-collar professions, schools that offer particular certifications in lieu of college degrees, and prospects have many more school choices than years gone by. So it is not surprising that retention is such an important topic when discussing first-year students.

Retention is important since first year students are so vulnerable. We want to have students feeling good about their education at your institution and these very first few classes are the best place to start. It is always better to retain students currently in the class and help see them through to graduation. But if a student runs into bumps along the way, if faculty members contribute to a positive experience, a student may be more willing to repeat a class if necessary and ultimately that too is retention. Retention, therefore, starts with a great customer experience (CX) and it starts in these very first classes. Faculty should liken their role as that of a hotel manager or front desk receptionist.

Faculty are the first role model the student really experiences at your school whether they take a class online or on-site. Faculty are the real greeters, the bell hops who open the car door and assist with any “emotional” luggage that needs to go upstairs, upstairs towards critical thinking, and rewarding learning outcomes. Faculty are the front desk managers, the managers who can provide the keys to the class and beyond. Consequently, first experiences should be exciting, engaging, and hospitable. But all of this depends on the attitude and perceptions of the new student. He or she will do better by knowing the lay of the land, reading the materials, and attentively contributing.

Instructors can contribute positively by setting an optimistic tone and employing a sense of immediacy. Instructors should be attentive and assist students with the best ways to approach learning regardless of the platform used. There are many benefits to having a class open 24/7 (online) and many ways to make the most of the learning outcomes. As mentioned above, faculty need to take on a service role and be consistent. Some have pointed to “educatainment,” but the multi-media aspect has to successfully incorporate the learning outcomes or suggestions on how to study or manage time better, for example, not simply entertain.

Instructors can think of themselves as not only the “hotel managers” making sure the bells and whistles are working like they ought to work, but act like the bell hop front door man, and provide an immediate and welcomed reception to each and every student. If all goes well, the culture will produce students who can critically think, have a heart, and the courage to stay the course through graduation.

On creating great customer experience, one such individual coined an engagement technique dubbed the Immediacy Principle. In the early 1970s, Mehrabian, a scholar at the University of California, popularized the immediacy principle. Regarding the immediacy principle, Mehrabian (2007) recently said, “The association of immediacy with liking, preference, and generally good feelings on the one hand and the association with nonimmediacy with dislike, discomfort, and other unpleasant feelings lead to numerous applications” (p.109). Teacher immediacy in the online classroom has been operationalized for this study as non-verbal teacher communications that foster psychological closeness and acknowledge student feelings in a timely manner (Dupin-Bryant, 2004; Easton & Katt,
2005; Mehrabian, 1971; 2007).

Immediacy is often operationalized as acknowledging the students emotions and feelings, using their first name, and generally working in any emotional content that supports their feelings in emails, messages, or even in the forums even though the learning outcomes should come first. Immediacy does not just mean to do things fast, we all need to be responsive. Immediacy means to respond because one cares, just like a hotel manager would respond.

A second key strategy that faculty can employ to further support student learning and to positively impact retention is to include a first year survival skills multi-media production embedded in the online classroom or within the electronic classroom that supports an on-site class. This could include study habits, grammar review, note taking, or how to use the school’s library, for example, Combine this with immediacy and identifying at risks students earlier in the process should prove quite effective.

A meta-analysis study of a variety of practices at a variety of higher education schools that offer online classes support this mantra. According to Moore and Fetzner (2009) several institutions have identified prominent methods they felt best led to retention and these methods were common to most schools researched. While there are literally dozens upon dozens of best practices, three of them would catch most faculty eyes.

For example, according to the Sloan C Faculty Development Board (2009) always strive to use the KISS method. (Keep it Simple Stupid) refers to the course design. Are the textbooks easily downloadable?  Is it clear where to find things, policies, and forums. “DO NOT include gratuitous activities (even if they’re really cool) that do not support the desired learning outcomes. Simplify the learning space while leveraging the most powerful communications technologies. Don't go overboard on the technology (no matter how cool it is!) such that it is distracting to learners.” (As Cited in Moore and Fetzner, 2009, p. 18).

While this seems to be opposite of the direction just discussed, technology welcomed as “clean,” then its use can be warranted. Be mindful the message is always more important than the medium in which it is contained. Edward Tufte (2002) conducted a study for NASA on the use of PowerPoints between various engineering departments. He found that many of these presentations were over complicated and defused the message. He found this so much so that he believed it could have been the cause of one of the space shuttles breaking apart.

Secondly, according to Moore and Fetzner (2009), faculty satisfaction also is part of the equation. The school actually has two customers. The student and faculty. According to the section entitled, VII. APPENDIX C: PRACTICES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO HIGH COURSE COMPLETION RATES, “Involve faculty members and their respective programs in content, curriculum design, peer quality reviews, and community building,” (p. 15). And this is exactly where faculty can set themselves apart from all other faculty!  Faculty are leaders in their subject matter expertise and can provide just the right type of CX mix using these proven best practices.

The study also indicated class size should be manageable.  But it did not say how much is too much. Obviously, classes are built with larger numbers first because inevitably there will be attrition. Finally, this one fell outside of academics, “Promote flexibility in student scheduling” (p. 17). Schedulers must be mindful of first year students who should not be overburdened by enrolling in multiple concurrent classes.

While there are many factors for first year faculty to consider that aid in student retention, faculty can focus on factors they have control over. These factors include employing memorable customer experiences via immediacy, those that make faculty the warm and friendly hotel managers and front desk receptionists and by including a “survival skills” multimedia production in the classroom. Thus, faculty play the most important role in the student’s customer lifecycle building retention along the CX continuum regardless whether the modality is online, on-site, or a mix of both. What faculty do in the classroom matters most!

References

Mehrabian, A. (1971). Silent messages. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth

Mehrabian, A. (2007). Nonverbal communications. New Brunswick, N.J:
AldineTransaction.

Moore, J and Fetzner, M. (2009). The road to retention: A closer look at institutions that achieve high course completion rates. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 13(3). 3-22.

Erik Bean, Ed.D. is a University of Phoenix Center for Leadership Studies and Educational Research fellow who studies how schools can use customer experience to foster student retention. He is presenting the results of a recent study dubbed, A University of Phoenix Research Center Customer Experience Assessment Study, at the International Leadership Association (ILA) annual conference on October 16, 2015 in Barcelona.