By giving students information-driven suggestions that lead to smarter actions, technology nudges are intended to tackle a range of problems surrounding the process by which students begin college and make their way to graduation.
New approaches are certainly needed….
There are many reasons for low rates of persistence and graduation, including financial problems, the difficulty of juggling non-academic responsibilities such as work and family, and, for some first-generation students, culture shock. But academic engagement and success are major contributors. That’s why colleges are using behavioral nudges, drawing on data analytics and behavioral psychology, to focus on problems that occur along the academic pipeline:
• Poor student organization around the logistics of going to college
• Unwise course selections that increase the risk of failure and extend time to degree
• Inadequate information about academic progress and the need for academic help
• Unfocused support systems that identify struggling students but don’t directly engage with them
• Difficulty tapping into counseling services
These new ventures, whether originating within colleges or created by outside entrepreneurs, are doing things with data that just couldn’t be done in the past—creating giant databases of student course records, for example, to find patterns of success and failure that result when certain kinds of students take certain kinds of courses.”
Nudge Nation: A New Way to Prod Students Into and Through College
Ben Wildavsky at EducationSector: “Thanks in part to Thaler and Sunstein’s work, the power of nudges has become well-established—including on many college campuses, where students around the country are beginning the fall semester. While online education and software-driven pedagogy on college campuses have received a good deal of attention, a less visible set of technology-driven initiatives also has gained a foothold: behavioral nudges designed to keep students on track to succeed. Just as e-commerce entrepreneurs have drawn on massive troves of consumer data to create algorithms for firms such as Netflix and Amazon, which unbundle the traditional storefront consumer experience through customized, online delivery, architects of campus technology nudges also rely on data analytics or data mining to improve the student experience.