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The Retention Center helps you discover which students in your course are at risk. Based on default rules and rules you create, students' engagement and participation are visually displayed, quickly alerting you to potential risk. From the Retention Center, you can communicate with struggling students and help them take immediate action for improvement. You can use the Retention Center features immediately—no setup required. |
Grab these resources and print them out to support you as you integrate the Retention Center.
The Retention Center is automatically on and immediately visible in your My Blackboard menu, and also accessible in the Evaluation section of a course's Control Panel.
The information in the Retention Center is for instructors only and isn't seen by your students.
You can turn the Retention Center on or off in your course from the Control Panel > Customization > Tool Availability. If you teach a course with another instructor, and turn off the Retention Center, it's turned off for both of you.
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In My Blackboard, you can stop or start tracking individual courses. On the Retention Center page, select a course link in the left panel. Use the tracking link in the right panel after the course name. Once disabled, warnings are no longer refreshed, and Retention Center is hidden in the Evaluation section of the Control Panel in the course.
Select the colored bar above the table to display a summary of the at-risk students in your course. Select a colored section to access more information. Select links in the pop-up boxes to drill in further.
For example, in a grade alert box, you can select the displayed number to access a list of students who trigger the alert.
Email notifications you send have a default subject and message that you can edit.
If you're sending an email to more than one recipient, the list isn't revealed to the group.
The main table displays which students are at risk in one or more of four categories:
You can create as many rules as you need in each category.
When you access the Retention Center, the data is refreshed. However, the data for the course activity rule is recorded once a day.
The table is sorted by most at-risk students and then alphabetically. Select a column heading to sort the column's contents.
Select the red dot indicator in a student's cell for more information, to include the student in the monitoring section in the right panel, or to send an email.
Select students' names to access their Retention Status pages. View their risk factors and the notification emails you've sent. You can also add these private notes about an individual student:
Select Customize to create new rules, edit existing rules, and delete rules. You can create as many rules as you need.
In the right side panel, you can view two types of information:
The section after the risk table provides a one-stop collection of your activity, engagement, and participation in your course. This data helps you become more aware of how your behaviors are (or are not) contributing to student success.
If you teach a course with another instructor, this area is directed specifically to the instructor who is logged in and viewing his or her own individualized activity, such as responding to students using the interactive tools. This area is intended to give the individual instructor some insight into how his or her activity in the course may affect student risk factors. Your colleagues can't view this same information, only their own activity.
You can view this information:
This information is only for you, and other users can't access it. Each time you enter your course, you can use it to determine which course areas require your attention.
The links in this section allow you to quickly take appropriate action to further engage your students. For example, select an assignment link to begin grading and provide feedback. You can easily access communication tools to interact with students or post an announcement.
You can use the four default rules to receive alerts about how your students perform in your course. Edit the rules to customize them for your content and expectations. When you create or edit rules, you decide which appear in the risk table on the Retention Center page.
Create rules
You can create as many rules as you want. For example, you can create individual grade rules that alert you when students score below a certain point value on each test. Next, you can create a grade rule that alerts you if a student's total grade for your course falls to a certain percentage.
On the Retention Center page, select Customize. On the Customize Retention Center page, point to Create Rule and select one of the four rule types described in this table.
| Rule Type | Description | |
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Course Activity |
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| Grade | Alert is based on a defined score for any grade or calculated column in the Grade Center. Students who score above or below the defined threshold for a specific grade item trigger an alert. Determine when a grade triggers an alert:
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| Course Access |
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| Missed Deadline | Alert is based on a defined due date for an assignment, test, or survey. Students who don't complete an assignment, test, or survey by the due date trigger an alert based on the option you choose:
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You can create missed deadline rules for Grade Center columns you create manually, but if you don't grade properly submitted items by the due date, a "false" alert is triggered. For manually created columns, students can submit items by the due date, but you must also grade them by the due date.
When you delete a rule, all your course content and data remains intact.
If no rules exist in a category, return to the main Retention Center page and select Use Defaults? in the column heading. The default rule and criteria are added. You can use the rule as is or edit it.
