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Strategies for improving student retention in Higher Education

09 June, 2021

Are your support services meeting student expectations?

The lasting impact of COVID-19 is that all students – both online and on-campus – now expect responsive, multi-channel support.

09 June 2021

With highly qualified student advisors and coaches trained to be the authentic voice of our university partners, OES is now offering its inbound and outbound support programs as discrete services.

Building on our proven reputation for delivering high impact Student Support & Coaching via end-to-end program management, OES is now offering university partners the opportunity to harness these services as individual, customised solutions. For online, blended and on-campus students, our support programs can be tailored to the scale and the technologies required.

What support does OES offer?

OES Student Support & Coaching includes the following solutions, which may be delivered individually or as a holistic support program.

  • Student advisory support
  • Student success coaching

Currently OES delivers support for online students on behalf of numerous leading universities, including Swinburne University of Technology, Queensland University of Technology, Western Sydney University and Monash University.

For some universities, our student advisors manage all types of enquiries and administrative activities. At others, we focus on supplementing existing teams to enable particular aspects of their program, such as after-hours support or email support.

Why uplift student support?

At this critical time in higher education, universities and training institutes can underpin their learning offering with genuine support, delivered when and how students need it. Better student support can improve student progress and retention rates, enhance graduate outcomes, and support the institution to become a ‘university of choice’. Student experience is crucial to reputation.

When universities and other higher education providers consider the cost of student acquisition, the importance of personalised, ongoing support is clear.

How OES delivers genuine support

OES specialises in authentic communication, developed over almost a decade of supporting students in the online environment. Our student advisors are all tertiary qualified, while our coaches offer psychology and counselling backgrounds. All support and coaching is developed in collaboration with our partners, including academic, administrative and technical staff.

“When it comes to understanding the student journey and removing the hurdles to success, OES has the experience and the evidence-based strategies to get it right,” says Tom Jepson, OES Manager, Student Success. “We advise our partners on when students will need intervention and what that intervention should be.”

OES also helps universities leverage their data to create predictive analytics, which inform these interventions.

For partners that choose to utilise OES’s inbound and outbound solutions, these teams work closely together to create a seamless ‘one-stop-shop’ for students.

“The focus of every interaction is to create a cohesive experience for students and extend their capacity to overcome future challenges,” Tom explains.

Coaching to increase retention

For our Australian higher education partner Swinburne Online, OES Student Success Coaching has supported a 5% increase in retention of commencing students into their second year of study. Importantly, OES learning analytics identified which students required outreach support.

“Interventions require great expertise,” Tom says. “With effective questioning and thoughtful observation, our coaches can shift a student’s mentality from denial, overwhelm or blame to motivation and self-belief. A student can leave a conversation with insight into their own behaviour patterns, and a plan for success in their study.”

Support & student experience

OES knows that effective, timely support improves student experience. That’s why OES student advisors are empowered to resolve issues as quickly as possible. “Our inbound support teams work to clear performance targets, ensuring calls and emails are answered promptly,” Tom explains.

With OES Student Support, Swinburne Online achieved an 88% positive rating for overall student experience and 89% for student support in the 2020 QILT Student Experience Survey (SES). This is well above the national average of 68% for overall experience and 73% for student support across undergraduate commencing and continuing students.

Find out more about how OES Student Support & Coaching.