How do you get students to track progress throughout your course?

Online/Resident Students ‘in tune’ with their Progress
Sandy Berry-Lowe, Assistant Professor, Biology

How do you reduce the dropout rate in an online course? Sandy has two suggestions:

1. the weekly quiz
2. a discussion (primarily ethical/genetic questions).

Both the quizzes and the discussion are open Monday morning until Sat. night. I get the grades up for the discussion on Monday...quizzes go in automatically.

The weeks that we have tests, there is no quiz or discussion assigned but they do have a 'reading' due. This is an essay. I am not strict with the deadline, except for the last one, but I like to read them at one or two sittings so I can grade them consistently. Overall, it's up to them to see if they can get it done.

I do have mini-lectures uploaded (about 50 now) and I have heard that these help a lot. I upload a 'due dates' page and tell them to print it out and check it off...