Episode 85

Are We Measuring the Wrong Things About Retention?

Guest name: Shaunak Roy
Guest title: Founder & CEO
Guest company: Yellowdig
Host: David Brunner

Brief description of the episode

With enrollment pressure rising, retention is a leadership issue.
In this episode, Shaunak Roy, Founder and CEO of Yellowdig, explains why many institutions are still relying on lagging indicators while students disengage in plain sight. He shares how higher ed leaders can rethink engagement as an institutional strategy, support faculty more effectively, and use earlier signals to improve persistence before it is too late.

Key Takeaways:

- Don’t rely only on clicks, logins, and assignment completion as indicators of engagement. These don’t reflect real learning or persistence.
- Identify whether engagement is self-directed or forced. Mandatory participation often leads to low motivation.
- Focus on the quality of interaction, not just frequency. Superficial responses don’t signal meaningful engagement.
- Track behaviors like peer interaction, voluntary contributions, and faculty connection.
- Reevaluate tools like discussion boards that often create activity without meaningful participation.
- Address student drop-off before classes begin, especially between deposit and the first day.
- Prioritize the first-year experience, where most retention risk shows up.
- Monitor persistence across terms instead of relying only on final dropout data.
- Understand why students leave, not just when they leave.
- Align teams to support students from enrollment through graduation, not in isolated stages.
- Design for participation beyond time-bound classrooms. Asynchronous environments give more students a chance to contribute.
- Reduce over-reliance on a few highly active students by creating balanced participation incentives.
- Use mechanisms like points, badges, or incentives to encourage quieter students to engage.
- Track how widely students interact across the class, not just within small groups.
- Build environments where more students engage with more peers, instead of limiting interaction to small clusters.
- Prioritize training for faculty and staff to ensure proper adoption of tools.
- Assign clear ownership and a strong internal champion for every pilot or rollout.
- Define measurable retention outcomes before implementation begins.
- Use early data signals to identify issues and course-correct quickly.
- Focus on digital experiences that meet students where they already are, especially on mobile.

Are We Measuring the Wrong Things About Retention?

Brief description of the episode

Key Takeaways:

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