Where’s Walter? Adjunct Outreach Strategies to Bridge the Virtual Distance and Increase Student Retention

There are hundreds of studies that address “no significant difference” in the quality of online versus on-ground instruction, yet it is clearly the instructor who makes the difference. While there is considerable research on student retention practices for university recruitment and enrollment departments, there seems to be little written on student outreach and retention strategies for online adjuncts.  This paper is based on existing research on the philosophies of adult education, a review of current literature related to online education and the writer’s own eight years of experience teaching online at for-profit universities as a baseline for offering online adjuncts five adjunct outreach strategies to bridge the virtual distance and increase student retention.