The Retention Centre

Introduction

The Retention Centre replaces the Early Warning System while retaining all existing data and rules.

The Retention Centre allows you to check on student progress within your course according to criteria of your choice. Students' participation and engagement are visually displayed, alerting you to any potential risk. As with the Early Warning System, you can use the Retention Center to communicate with students who are struggling, to support them and remind them to take action for improvement.

Accessing the Retention Centre

You can access the the Retention Centre either from your Blackboard menu or from the Evaluation section of a course's Control Panel. When you access the Retention Centre, the data is refreshed. Please note, however, the data for the module activity is recorded once per day.

• Retention Center selection from Blackboard Menu
  

• Retention Center selection from Course Management panel
  

Retention Centre Activation

You can turn the Retention Centre on or off in your module from the Control Panel, selecting Customization and then Tool Availability
or alternatively you can Start tracking now or Stop tracking this course from within the specific module:

• Start tracking now button
  

• Stop tracking this course link
  

Retention Centre

Select the red Students currently at risk bar to display (on the same bar) a summary of at risks students in your module. Select the different coloured sections of the bar for further information. You can drill down further by selecting links in the pop-up boxes.

At Risk Table

The main table displays students who are at risk in one or more of four categories:

• Missed Deadlines
  Based on a due date for an assignment, test or survey.

• Grades
  Based on a score for any grade or calculated column in the Grade Center.

• Course Activity
  Based on the time a student works in a module using the data generated from his/her 'clicks'. Effectively, the last time a student 'clicked' on content within the module.

• Course Access
  Based on the date the student last access the module.

• Select the red dot in a student's cell for more information, to include the student in the monitoring section in the right panel by selecting the star icon, or to send an email.

• An example of a pop-up box, which can be used to notify (email) students at risk:
  

Select the student's name to access their Retention Status information such as risk factors, any notification emails you have sent previously along with any private notes you have made in Add a Note.

• On the right panel you can view:

• Students you are monitoring
  Select a red dot in the risk table to view a specific student's alert information. Then select the star icon to place the student's information is this panel. This simply allows you to quickly check particular students you think are most at risk in your module.

• Example of red dots for selection
  
• star icon that appear after selecting a red dot
  

Other Information you are monitoring
This is to monitor activity not related to risk, for example you could create a rule to easily check those doing well in the module.

Your Course Activity

Scroll down past the risk table to view Your Course Activity. This a summary of your activity and engagement in your module. This information includes:

• Your last login
• Your participation, eg the number of times you have posted in blogs, not your students
• Your most recent announcment
• Your addition of new material
  
  

• Email notifications sent have a default subject and message that you can edit.
  

Customise Retention Centre

The default at-risk settings are:

• Course Activity
• Course Access
• Grade
• Missed Deadline
  These default settings can be modified by selecting Customise in the Retention Centre and editing each rule. However, you can also create new rules based on these default at-risk categories.
  
  

You can edit any of the four default rule types: Default Activity Rule, Default Course Access Rule, Default Grade Rule and Default Missed Deadline Rule by selecting Edit beside the rule Name.

Create New Rule

To create a new rule, select Create, and choose on of the four rule types:

1. Course Activity Rule
2. Grade Rule
3. Course Access Rule
4. Missed Deadlines

Complete the Blackboard form for the rule conditions and select Submit

Here is an example of creating a new rule for Course Access, the rule is called 'New Course Activity Rule' and the alert is set for 'Days Since Last Course Access' 3: