Online courses offer creators a great way to supplement income, share knowledge, and engage with learners across the world. In order to deliver the best possible course, creators need to track and examine essential metrics, particularly course completion rates. 

Tracking course completion rates helps creators understand the strengths and weaknesses of their courses. While no course creator can expect a 100% completion rate, higher is better. When completion rates are low, learners are less likely to recommend your course to others, your profitability suffers, and you have no evidence that your course is effective.

Let’s explore more reasons why course completion rates are important and how to improve them. 

Why do course completion rates matter?

In an online learning environment, completion rates can indicate many things. For example, higher completion rates may indicate that:

• The course is effective
• Learning outcomes are met
• Learners are engaged
• Course expectations are reasonable 

Students who have a positive experience and complete the course are more likely to enroll in another course and promote it to others. Higher completion rates also allow you to gain testimonials, case studies, and reviews, all of which are necessary for marketing your course. 

When rates are low, though, the course fails to do what you promised. Maybe one assignment is too time-consuming, or perhaps the course content doesn’t cover a topic well enough to lead to a successful assessment. Whatever the reason for low completion rates, there are ways to improve the numbers.

How to improve course completion rates 

Check your course description and outline 

Start by examining your course outline or syllabus. What are you promising, and what are you asking students to do? Make sure your course description accurately and honestly reflects the course and outlines its learning objectives. 

A good course description can offer:

• An overview of the length of the course 
• Major deadlines 
• Time commitment 
• Course content details 
• Prerequisites and required skills 
• Assignments 
• Technical requirements

If your course description is not meeting learners’ expectations, your course completion rates could be negatively impacted.  

Embrace microlearning 

Another great way to increase course completion rates is to implement microlearning. Microlearning is a teaching approach that focuses on content being broken down into smaller, manageable chunks with shorter lessons. 

Whole courses can be separated into microcourses, with lessons ranging from one to fifteen minutes. When course material is broken up in this way, it’s easy to stick to one topic at a time and focus on each lesson. 

When using microlearning, it is especially important to be sure that your course is as mobile-friendly as possible to accommodate the variety of devices on which students will access your course. Embrace microlearning to encourage learners to easily complete course lessons and boost course completion rates. 

Engage learners 

Another sure way to improve course completion rates is to increase engagement. Engaged learners are less likely to check out during the course. 

Some solid methods to increase engagement include:

• Providing meaningful feedback and answering questions in a timely manner — ideally within 24 hours. 
• Reach out to students individually and personally, especially when they start to lag. 
• Vary your format to include a wide variety of media and methods: videos, quizzes, games, and more. 
• Create an online community for learners to help increase learners’ sense of belonging. Try forums, social media groups, and discussion boards to do so.
• Offer incentives for students who attend your virtual office hours. 

Overall, try methods that get learners excited about your course. Focusing on increasing engagement will lead to higher learner retention and course completion rates. 

Try gamification 

Speaking of incentives, rewards can greatly increase engagement, retention, and course completion rates. Do learners earn a certificate for mastering a skill and/or completing the course? Are you using any gamification elements like leaderboards and points badges? 

Course creators can gamify easily with LearnDash LMS. Further, you can incentivize learner engagement and completion by offering additional content, products, deals, and services to those who complete the course. 

Review analytics and reviews 

If your completion rates are low but you’re not sure why, review your analytics and course evaluations. Here’s how:

• Conduct exit surveys from learners who have completed your course to see what worked well and what needs work. 
• Keep an eye on overall scores and grades since students with lower scores are more likely to drop out. 
• Examine when and where learners stop engaging. 
• Check out comments and discussions on social media platforms. 

If you need analytic tools, ProPanel from LearnDash can help you track enrollments, assignments, and student progress.

Improve course completion rates with LearnDash LMS 

There are several steps you could take to improve your course completion rates, and you can do plenty of them on your own. However, with LearnDash LMS, you’ll get the tools you need to build beautiful and engaging courses, track progress, manage assignments, and run advanced reports. 

Paired with strong course content and the above tips, you can be sure to improve course completion rates! Try the LearnDash LMS demo to see what it can do for you.