Who’s in the Learners’ Corner?
In this Article
Coaching Online Learners to Successfully Complete Courses
Many of us avoid the gym like the plague. Now imagine getting invited by your boxing-enthusiast boss to join her for a few rounds in the ring. You had not set foot in a gym since 2006, let alone tried out boxing – ever – and now this? We’d completely understand if your knees are buckling at the prospect!
Many learners new to online learning feel this same knee-buckling panic at the first login, which only intensifies as they try to start learning. Last week, we spoke about the importance of onboarding processes to help them get through this. This week, we look at the processes we call success coaching: getting them to stay and finish their courses.
Going the Distance
Getting a nervous learner to climb into the ring is a story in itself. Finally, you get them to put on the gloves, they get in, and the bell goes! The first flurry of energy carries them through Round 1, then Round 2, and then, somewhere in Round 3, legs turn heavy, and breathing starts to burn.
Every fighter reaches this point. What decides whether they stay and finish the round (let alone the 12 rounds!) is almost always a story of who is in their corner.
Every online course has the same moment, usually after week 2 or so, when the opening burst fades. The keenest learners push on, and a few race ahead. In the middle is a group that’s starting to slip: they skip an activity, scroll past a video, log in only every second or third day, leaving half-finished units and incomplete modules.
The temptation is to leave them to it – their learning is their responsibility, isn’t it?
Slipping Rarely Repairs Itself
The trouble is that a slipping learner seldom recovers alone. Reviews of online-course dropout find the same pattern again and again: people leave when they hit a hard patch and have no structured support to fall back on.
Researchers Lee and Choi (2011) tell us that thoughtful support is one of the few things that reliably pulls those numbers back.
This is where the corner earns its place. A cornerman does not fight for you, and does not teach you to box mid-bout. They read the rounds, catch the moment you start to tire, and step in between bells with that one adjustment that keeps you upright.
success coaching is the cornerman role moved into a course. Some call it coaching, like the large randomised study of student coaching that had coaches contact students regularly to clarify their goals and tie daily effort to them. Coached students are more likely to keep going (Bettinger & Baker, 2014) and helping online learners plan and manage their own study improved completion (Jansen et al., 2020). Coaches didn’t reteach content; their role was to check in and help the students manage their time, in essence: be a cornerman.
What Good success coaching Looks Like
success coaching is not chasing people for compliance, and it is not tutoring them through the content. It sits alongside both, and it starts with one thing: understanding where each learner actually is, so the support you offer fits the difficulty they are facing.
Evidence-based research tells us that success coaching boils down to a handful of concrete actions:
Watch the early rounds
Track logins, submissions and last activity, so a tiring learner shows up while there is still time to help.
Reach out as a person, not a system
A short, human message that names what you noticed beats a bulk reminder every time.
Set one realistic next step, not the whole mountain
Agree on the single thing that gets them moving again.
Say the finish is reachable, and mean it
Connect that small step back to why they enrolled.
We have turned these four moves into a one-page coaching checklist you can keep beside you. Sign up for our newsletter to download it.
The Danger of Automated success coaching
We need to add a word of caution here. Automated prompts on their own are not very effective.
When a research team sent scheduled nudges to online learners, this only had very modest effects (Baker et al., 2016). Another study found that simply recommending good study strategies, with no one behind the recommendation, did not improve results at all (Kizilcec et al., 2016).
success coaching is effective when there is an actual person engaging with the students and following up with them.
In conclusion
When providing success coaching, it is often the learners who struggle to complete a course who have the least time, the most happening around them, and the least experience of studying online. These are often the very people who fall away, and the ones the course would have helped most.
Consistent, patient support as part of success coaching is not a luxury added to a course. It is what gives learners the same real chance of finishing as everyone else. The learners most likely to drop off are often the ones a single message could save.
Effective success coaching doesn’t need a big team. A small organisation can do it well, with a designated person who has to spot the signs of slipping early, and answer them with a genuine message at the right moment.
In larger courses, the challenge is often spotting those who are slipping and doing this early enough to make a difference. How to do this is exactly where we turn next week!
References
Baker, R., Evans, B., & Dee, T. (2016). A randomized experiment testing the efficacy of a scheduling nudge in a massive open online course (MOOC). AERA Open, 2(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858416674007
Bettinger, E. P., & Baker, R. B. (2014). The effects of student coaching: An evaluation of a randomized experiment in student advising. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(1), 3–19. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373713500523
Jansen, R. S., van Leeuwen, A., Janssen, J., Conijn, R., & Kester, L. (2020). Supporting learners’ self-regulated learning in Massive Open Online Courses. Computers & Education, 146, 103771. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103771
Kizilcec, R. F., Pérez-Sanagustín, M., & Maldonado, J. J. (2016). Recommending self-regulated learning strategies does not improve performance in a MOOC. In Proceedings of the Third (2016) ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale (pp. 101–104). https://doi.org/10.1145/2876034.2893378
Lee, Y., & Choi, J. (2011). A review of online course dropout research: Implications for practice and future research. Educational Technology Research and Development, 59(5), 593–618. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-010-9177-y
Who’s in Your Learners’ Corner?
Supporting learners at the right moment can make the difference between dropping out and finishing strong. Book a complimentary 30-minute conversation to explore practical ways to build success coaching into your Moodle LMS.
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Dr Isabel Tarling – CEO
Isabel Tarling is a learning sciences scholar, programme designer and education researcher, with a PhD from the University of Cape Town. Her research in online and technology-supported learning forms the foundation for much of her writing. She aims to build easy-to-understand bridges between evidence-based research and its everyday application in real-world contexts. Isabel is the founder of Limina, where these ideas are put to work to reimagine learning for organisations of all shapes and sizes.