Cohort-based learning is one of the unique ways of learning approaches in the online education system. Facilitating community-based learning in which learners join a group of peer members who share the same educational goals and have the same challenges.
This is the approach where learners' social traits have been considered in the field of education.

This approach gives the educator and learners a lot of advantages over their competitors. However, the cohort-based learning approach has its problems, which may occur while using the system for a longer period.

Among those problems, one of the most frequently faced challenges by educators is dropouts. In dropouts, there are frequently withdrawing students, which will increase day by day as the course progresses. Now let’s understand some of the factors that may be the reason behind the dropouts.

What Causes Dropouts in Cohort-Based Learning Programs?

1. Time Management Challenges

Many learners who registered for courses under cohort-based learning have their own responsibilities in their personal as well as professional lives. Learners have their commitments like work, family, and friends. Which will make the learner busy.

Commitments will occupy the learners most of the time, and learners don’t know how to manage their time, which makes them drop out of the course even though they don’t want to.

According to a CollegeLSP, 86% of US college students report difficulty with time management while 54% experience increased stress due to poor time management practices.”

2. Feeling Disconnected

The cohort-based learning strongly relies on collaborative learning, but sometimes isolation and being disconnected from the group may be the reason behind the dropout. One of the challenging tasks in cohort-based learning is building a personalized connection online because sometimes building a personalized connection is difficult.

According to vnhsmirror.com, one of the main reason that makes students feeling disconnceted to the clasess is due to reduction in attention span in students because of social media usage.

3. Stress and academic pressure

One of the common reasons behind the dropout is stress and academic pressure on the learner, which is to meet the deadline for completion of courses, project reports, and assignments. Learners are already facing external pressure from their peers or their responsibilities or commitments.

Meeting deadlines and completing the course in a particular time brings stress to the learner, which eventually becomes the reason for the dropout.

According to research studies by Mount Mercy University, collaborative learning does promote peer support and motivation but has an effect of raising stress levels, especially when students feel responsible for their learning and that of their group. Being put under obligation to contribute equally can cause anxiety and lead to burnout, especially in the case of uneven workload or undesirable group dynamics.

4. Overwhelming Course Content

This normally occurs when the material is too complex, at a pace faster than that learner can handle, or at best, hard to catch onto. That will naturally do a number on their feelings-making them feel overwhelmed. Then, dropout results from frustration when sufficient support or resources to keep up with the curriculum are not provided.

Studies conducted by IAFOR Journal of Education have shown that experienced online students might find group work stressful if the activities are not well coordinated or clear expectations are lacking. That means while working together can be great, poor organization and communication make the content more hassle to be managed and involve lots of bad feelings.

5. Lack of personalized feedback

In cohort-based learning, peer and instructor support are required to maintain a pace of things. Learners become lost or unsupported and decide to leave the course when they do not gain enough guidelines or feedback.

Research by North Carolina State University, suggests that inadequate facilitation of the instructors, lack of emotional or social support, and limited availability of technical resources stand among other factors which disable learners from engaging and succeeding within a group activity, especially in an online environment

Cohort Dropout Handling Strategies

1. Personalized Onboarding and Early Engagement

When individuals know about the course concepts, educational goals, and challenges in the courses, then the learners are less likely to drop out of the courses.

Personalized onboarding will work as a filter for the learners' enrolment, which filters the quality of learners who have the goal to complete the course. This can be accomplished by conducting personalized onboarding sessions or the automated welcome video or email.

which will clarify to the learner about the course and its requirements. Conducting personalized sessions will reduce the dropout numbers from the courses.

2. Frequent Progress Tracking Using Learning Analytics

Frequent progress checking is also one of the effective strategies that will reduce dropout rates. If the instructor frequently checks the analytics about the course progress and students' progress, it will be easy to identify the weaker students who are lacking in the pace.

If instructors track the individual reports from the analytics, then it’ll be helpful for the instructor to give additional support and care to those students who are lacking in pace, which they can fix by mentoring them personally.

This will happen when you use analytics tools on your course website, which can be solved by the Learnyst.com platform, which will provide analytics reports not only about your course's progress but also about your sales and marketing-related analytics.

3. Gamification to Boost Engagement

Using the gamification technique in your course will improve engagement in your course participation because it will entertain learners and create positive feedback for your content.

Implementing gamified elements like badges, leaderboards, and completion rewards will motivate and entertain learners during their learning period. Celebrating and offering rewards for completing a small achievement makes the learner happy, feels motivated, and competes with their fellow peer members. Which eventually helps to reduce the dropout number.

4. Flexible Scheduling and self-paced modules

One of the most common reasons for dropping out of learning is that learners have their own personal and professional commitments, which will not permit them to attend class on time.

For that reason, instructors should have a flexible schedule for their classes, which is flexible enough to accommodate changes at the learner's request. This will ensure that every learner has the flexibility to attend sessions on time.

Educators may need Learnyst's flexible schedule system for their courses to maintain a flexible schedule where most of the learners attend the sessions. This system works automatically according to the scheduled time.

5. Peer Mentorship Programs

In cohort-based learning, the main focus is to build a community out of learners. However, maintaining the learner's peer-to-peer relationships can become difficult. Therefore, the instructors should establish peer mentorship programs where the learners from the previous batch will teach and support the newcomers.

The peer mentorship program will make new learners comfortable to go with the sessions, mentors from the previous batch will guide them and support them in every possible way, which will improve the learning environment and reduce the dropout numbers from the institutes. 

6. Adaptive Content for Personalized Learning Paths

All learners have their perspectives and understanding levels, which may change according to the time. Adaptive content helps the learners to learn the concepts at their own pace, and it will become easy to understand for them.

Divide the adaptive content for each level of learners according to their progress reports. This might help learners understand the concept at their own pace, making the content more understandable.

Adaptive learning technologies customize content based on individual learners’ paths, progress, strengths, and challenges during their learning journey. If a learner struggles to understand a certain topic or concept, the technology guides him and provides him with other necessary resources to support his learning.

7. Regular Feedback Loops and Check-Ins

Regular feedback loops and check-ins will help understand the learner’s point of view, which can be used for further development of the product. Conduct regular check-ins and surveys to collect data from the learners.

The collected data can be used to understand the possible improvements in the course and feedback loops. The learner will express his difficulties while attending the sessions, which can be helpful for the educators to give the necessary support, eventually reducing the dropout rates from the courses.

Final Thoughts

In handling the dropout rates in cohort-based learning, educators need to understand the technical as well as the educational-related issues. This can be resolved by using tools like collecting feedback, peer membership programs, and adaptive content design for the learners that suits their own pace and understanding level.

By leveraging analytical tools, gamification, and peer mentorship, the educator can create a dynamic and flexible system for their cohort-based learning model, which can be engaging and motivating enough for the learner.

A dynamic cohort-based learning approach requires dynamic and flexible platform support, which Learnyst’s highly flexible learning management system (LMS) can provide. Join today with our 14-day free trial program!

FAQs

1. What is the collaborative teaching and learning strategy known as?

Cohort-Based learning.

2. what is a Student Cohort?

Student cohort is a systematic educational structure where a group of students enroll together learn together and achieve their shared goals.

3. Why Collaborative learning is important?

With Collaborative learning, students will work as a team which eventually increases the team spirit and the individual performance.