Certified Course

Certified Courses
RT102

Orientation and First Week Activities to Increase Retention

Building a program to ensure a smooth "hand off" from Admissions to Faculty is a critical component of student retention. Applicants often develop a strong bond with their admissions representative that ends (from the institution's standpoint) once they begin classes. This online course provides practical ideas on designing an orientation program, first-week-of-class and other retention activities that connect the student with faculty, the college and each other that will help you retain and graduate more students.

Course Rating
Course Testimonials
Course Structure
Course Objectives
Performance Group
Certification Credits

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In conjunction with the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, MaxKnowledge has been honored by the 1EdTech Consortium as a Learning Impact Award Finalist for scaling pedagogical knowledge and practice through evidence-based technology.

MaxKnowledge Founder & CEO, Dr. Amir Moghadam, has been named as one of Career College Central's top 12 innovators leaping forward with ideas that have influenced the career education realm.

MaxKnowledge Chief Learning Officer, Tarlon Moghadam, has been named as one of Career Education Review's top 20 leaders changing career education.

In collaboration with the Universal Technical Institute, an independent evaluation study by the ROI Institute® proved the ROI of MaxKnowledge employee training on student retention to be over 500%.

MaxKnowledge leadership development courses are sponsored by Harvard Business Publishing and feature content from Harvard ManageMentor®.

Performance Group

This course provides you with a lifelong peer-to-peer learning opportunity through a specific Performance Group created within the Career Ed Lounge, a learning community of career education professionals. This allows you to learn and share with your peers at any time you want, even after you complete the course.

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Course Testimonials

"I really enjoyed your information and will share it with my colleagues! Thank you!"

"This is a great way for me to see the broad spectrum of ideas for Orientation/Retention activities. Thank you..."

"This course was helpful and I will walk away from it having learned more ways to proactively maintain retention at my school."

"The course answered my questions about how to improve my orientation and introduced me to the importance of the first week. The forum remarks of students richly enhanced the course material. I will highly recommend it to others on my staff. "

"I currently teach first term students in a program of 5 terms. This course was extremely beneficial to me, thank you!"

"I am shocked about how much I liked this training module. This one is my absolute favorite and is going to benefit me greatly in my position as a professional - Thank you!"

"Excellent course! A must for any instructor or professor starting students out in secondary education. It is also a great course to reinforce key factors as to how a school should operate successfully."

"Loved this course. It made me rethink our orientation program, and I will be making changes as a result of this."

"I truly enjoyed the course. It was easy to follow and built on each concept learned. It had some good ideas that I will be using on my campus."

"Really helpful, especially as I am about to teach a term 1 class for the first time. This class taught me to focus on the first week, and that will really help with retention. Thank you!"

"This course was a very good reminder of ways to engage students early on and foster ideas to promote retention. Sometimes after working for awhile we forget the basics."

"This course reinforced that the efforts put forth by myself and co-workers for orientation are right on target. I definitely agree that ALL staff as well as current students should be a big part of orientation."

Course Objectives

Module 1: Students' Expectations

List the major reasons why students enroll in college.
Address students' expectations.
Assess what students are thinking about their classmates.
Determine students' common fears.
Identify the reasons why students decide whether to persist or withdraw.

Module 2: Institutional Connections

Apply techniques for helping students overcome buyer's remorse.
Build institutional credibility.
Provide opportunities for students to connect with multiple departments.
Describe how leaving orientation as a student helps build retention.

Module 3: Faculty Involvement

Recognize the importance of having faculty attend orientation.
Identify the role of faculty at orientation.
Recognize the importance of setting academic expectations.
Facilitate classmate accountability.

Module 4: First Week and Late Enrollments

Enhance assimilation during the first week.
Acclimate late enrollments to ensure success.
Identify signs of potential withdrawal.
Apply methods for proactively retaining students.

Course Structure

Course Format

Can Start Anytime
Self-paced (within course enrollment timeframe)
4 Hours of Activities

Completion Requirements

Study Course Content
Pass ALL Required Quizzes

Digital Badge & Certificate of Completion

4 Hours of Continuing Education
Awarded upon successful completion of course

Course Rating

Certification Credits

This course provides a Certificate of Completion with 4 hours of continuing education credits.
This course provides credit toward the Certified Higher Education Professional (CHEP) credential in the following specialization area(s):
- CHEP in Admissions
- CHEP in Campus Operations
- CHEP in Career Services
This course provides credit toward the continuing education requirements for CHEPs in all areas of specialization.

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