Decades of research into student attrition offer a bevy of conflicting causes and cures for dropouts. However, the consistent factor most research identifies as a key antecedent to student persistence is faculty.

Considering the faculty connection to student persistence, I conducted focus group research with faculty at two universities that specialize in adult higher education to discover best practices for fostering adult-student goal commitment. Combined with an extensive review of retention literature in traditional higher education environments, the research suggests that universities with a myopic focus on institutional-centric "retention" initiatives may only make matters worse.

More than 50 higher education professionals joined me during the ACBSP Excellence in Teaching Track for a presentation on the impact that synchronous activities can have on students in online classrooms. The presentation explored literature on the tradeoffs students face for the convenience of online learning and opportunities that live interaction might offer to students in online environments. We also reviewed the results of a project to test the impact of live sessions on the psychological factors that serve as predictors of student success in otherwise asynchronous environments. The results found significant improvement in student learning outcomes and faculty satisfaction in comparison to control groups. The following are a link to the presentation slides and a summary of the research.