Retention Center

Instructors can access the Retention Center either under the Evaluation menu of the Blackboard Control Panel or from the My Blackboard drop-down menu in the upper-right area of Blackboard.  See both methods for accessing the Retention Center in the image below (taken from Blackboard's official help page for the Retention Center):

Blackboard's Retention Center (formerly known as the "Early Warning System") provides instructors with a visual overview of student activity and progress within a given course.  This system, which requires no initial setup to function but can be customized to suit your preferences, offers an effective means for monitoring student progress and easily identifying which students are at risk within your course.  Additionally, pre-written messages are available to email to at-risk students, encouraging them to take immediate action.

Check out Blackboard's video for an overview of the Retention Center and its features:

There are four pre-configured default rules for the Retention Center:

• Course Activity - Activity in the last 1 week(s) is 20% below course average
• Course Access - Last access more than 5 day(s) ago
• Grade - External Grade is 25% below class average
• Missed Deadline - 1 deadline(s) have been missed by more than 0 days

Since these are already established, there is no setup required on the part of the instructor; however, any of the default rules can be customized, and new rules can also be added.  The Course Activity and Grade rules use the rest of students in that particular course as the norm, while the Course Access and Missed Deadline rules are individually-based.  The numbers used for measurement within any of these rules can be modified.  

Visiting the Retention Center will display an At-Risk Table, providing a visual overview of student activity and progress within the given course (as displayed in the video) and helping instructors to easily identify at-risk students.  Instructors can drill down into the Retention Center to view details about individual students and then choose when to email students to alert them of any issues, as well as suggesting actions to be taken.  Emails are pre-written but can be customized by the instructor.  This offers an effective means for viewing overall student activity without having to individually monitor each student's interactions to identify any potential issues.

Additionally, instructors can even monitor their own activity within a course to help you "become more aware of how your behaviors are (or are not) contributing to student success" (https://en-us.help.blackboard.com/Learn/9.1_2014_04/Instructor/130_Student_Performance/010_Retention_Center).  This information can only be viewed by the instructor and can be used to help keep yourself on track or recognize which areas might require your attention.  

For additional details and customization options of the Retention Center, view Blackboard's official Retention Center Help page.  Visit us again next week to learn more about monitoring students via the Performance Dashboard.