Nudge technology can help students re-engage

Higher education institutions (HEIs) need to engage students to ensure they are best placed to succeed. Universities have grappled with how to improve student engagement for decades, but we are yet to crack this multifaceted issue. However, technological advances now make it easier to determine which students may be disengaged, and how automated initiatives can be implemented to provide cost-effective solutions.

The University of Canterbury (UC) has introduced its Analytics for Course Engagement (ACE) system to identify students who are at risk of disengaging from their learning and offer them support to get back on track. The three-part programme targets all undergraduate students, and includes student-facing dashboards, course-related information for teaching staff, and a proactive re-engagement programme.

• Offer students a personal touch through peer support
• From cohort to community: how to support student-led initiatives
• Look after the intangibles and the metrics will look after themselves

Because ACE is critical technology in identifying and supporting our most vulnerable students, we have open-sourced the dashboard code for the greater public good.

Here’s how it works and what it has taught us.

Student- and teaching-focused dashboards

Access to personalised dashboards within their learning management system (LMS) aids students’ self-regulated learning. They can see how the time they have spent on online learning compares with the class average. Extra features enable students to understand how much time to dedicate to their studies, and which items to focus on for the week. ACE includes assessment information in the same space, encouraging better time management.

Similarly, ACE empowers teaching staff to identify students at risk, reflect on their teaching, and enhance resources and support for students. As they are at the coalface, teaching staff help inform what data is needed to accurately monitor students and improve outcomes within individual courses. These dashboards enable reflection on course design and how information is presented to students.

Targeted re-engagement programme

Recent research has shown that ACE is effective in nudging students to re-engage with learning resources. When students become disengaged from digital learning resources, they receive a personalised text message and email. If they do not reply to the message or re-engage with their digital learning resources, student advisers try to connect with the student by email or phone. Students who receive a message from ACE show engagement levels about 33 per cent higher than those who aren’t contacted.

ACE uses data that is automatically collected within the LMS, and HEIs can tap into this rich data source to target disengagement. When this data is integrated with a student relationship management system that has text message and email capabilities, an automated system can nudge students who are disengaged. In this way, most outreach can be handled in a cost-effective way, freeing up more intensive, human-centred intervention for the students who need it.

What the ACE system has taught us

1. Build your partners, find your champions

Cultivate external partnerships with providers such as edtech companies and internal champions who understand what the programme is trying to achieve. Great partners are those willing and able to co-design and for whom collaboration is at their core. Building strong networks with respected members within your institution will generate the buy-in you need to implement a new programme and effect change. These people, who may be academic or professional staff, are the champions of your product. Choose them wisely!

2. Stay agile, and think about scale

Start small if you don’t have the budget for a full-scale initiative. UC created a minimum viable product in three months and it developed from there. This allowed us to tweak and change as we went, providing basic dashboards at the beginning with a mail-merge email and SMS outreach programme before creating a business case for further funding. If you’re starting in one programme or faculty, consider how it can be scaled but remain manageable.

3. Not about us without us

Students are your most valuable resource in developing this kind of programme. Making assumptions about their needs and behaviour runs the risk of completely missing the mark. Run focus groups to ask what would be helpful in an engagement dashboard and what types of communication they prefer. The same goes for your lecturing staff. What are the burning questions that they need to answer to make their teaching better?

Students today face many demands in an increasingly connected but distracting world. By harnessing technology and automation, HEIs are better able to increase engagement and ultimately impact student success.

Ellie Kay is acting director of Kia Angitu | Student Success and project lead for the Analytics for Course Engagement programme at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury.

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