Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    AI and Microcredentials
Sign In
The Review

The Right Way to Nudge Students

By Colleen M. Carmean and Jill Frankfort July 1, 2018

As data on student progress become more robust and easier to gather, more and more colleges are “nudging” students, prompting them to make decisions that will help them stay on track and graduate. We — an academic administrator and a company leader — have worked at the forefront of nudging in higher education since 2012 and are thrilled to see its widespread embrace as a student-success strategy.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

As data on student progress become more robust and easier to gather, more and more colleges are “nudging” students, prompting them to make decisions that will help them stay on track and graduate. We — an academic administrator and a company leader — have worked at the forefront of nudging in higher education since 2012 and are thrilled to see its widespread embrace as a student-success strategy.

Yet we are concerned that colleges are equipped with plenty of data but not enough guidance about how to use that information effectively in reaching out to students.

istock
New Strategies and Technologies for Advising
The job is becoming more professionalized, holistic, and high tech. But colleges are just beginning to learn how to use new masses of data to help their students thrive.
  • Stats Gathered in Advising Help Colleges Rethink Intro Courses
  • Student Needs Have Changed. Advising Must Change, Too.
  • How to Best Harness Student-Success Technology

Over the past several years, the University of Washington at Tacoma has used predictive analytics and early-alert and student-nudging tools that align with known student-success strategies. The university has put a lot of thought into how best to act on the real-time student data that those tools produce. Its partnership with Persistence Plus, which supports students with personalized text-message nudges throughout the academic year, has seen consistently strong results — including a study that found a six-percentage-point increase in graduation for the students most at risk of dropping out.

Our experience has led us to offer five key questions that colleges should ask themselves about their efforts to nudge students.

Does the intervention address the actual student challenge? Thoughtfully prompting students to complete important milestones to graduation can be helpful, but to be truly effective, interventions must target the underlying reasons that more students aren’t completing these activities on their own. For example, one college had gently encouraged students who were close to completion to complete their graduation applications. However, it was found that some students did not know if they were actually eligible to graduate.

The fix was not a simple intervention but rather the more complex work of improving the institution’s degree-audit process so students understood their eligibility for graduation. In another case, here at Tacoma, a registration outreach revealed that students mistakenly thought that they were ineligible to file for graduation if they had taken out emergency loans.

Do the data that prompt an intervention make sense and tell the complete story? One can still make mistakes, even when constructing thoughtful prompts. At Tacoma, outreach through our analytics system to students not registered for the next term didn’t take into consideration that some students graduate in the winter quarter. Because registration and graduation-process data were separate, the nudge mistakenly included those students poised to graduate and caused a few of them to worriedly ask if their paperwork had been rejected. We learned that it is important for the team selecting data to drive interventions to be familiar with the graduation process and be made up of people who hold a diversity of roles.

Does the intervention effectively use evidence-based practices such as behavioral science? Thoughtful use of behavioral science offers a number of strategies that — without being punitive, clueless, or coercive — can help students to follow through on their intentions. For instance, a nudge encouraging students to seek tutoring can couch this behavior as an expected college norm rather than as stigmatizing. An intervention that promotes a view of science as collaborative and engaging can help students persist in STEM majors.

If a nudging effort is to be effective, the design team should include experts in social psychology and student interventions. Don’t leave content solely to your IT staff or registrar.

Do interventions consider student challenges that may not show up in early-alert systems? Traditionally, early-alert systems rely on flags, often from the faculty, about a poor grade or missed class. While those are important, they don’t capture the more nuanced reasons that students can suddenly fall off track. Interactive nudging can respond to different kinds of data that may predict withdrawal from college, such as students’ motivation levels, a lack of social fit, or home and life challenges that threaten to derail their progress.

A study at the University of Washington revealed that only 22 percent of lower-division students leave because of any academic distress. They disappear for diverse reasons, often as a result of temporary crises that the university could have helped to mitigate. Nudges can help students stay in college by connecting them to services that support them, such as food pantries, housing aid, and child care when they most need it.

ADVERTISEMENT

Is the intervention nuanced to reflect the needs of different student populations? Nontraditional students — now the majority of U.S. college enrollment — can have a swirl of characteristics: first-generation, military, underrepresented minorities, part-time, first year, mothers, Pell Grant recipients. Often they feel alone or like outsiders. They can become the high-achieving students who don’t return, with lingering debt and without a degree. But studies have shown that brief interventions can reframe their perspective on college. Using nudges that target the specific needs and strengths of these different populations and the campus resources that are available to them can let students know they’re seen and can foster an internal sense of belonging that leads to degree completion.

Repeatedly, we’ve seen that learner analytics used to generate interventions, reminders, kudos, and nudges can have positive impacts on student success. Insights from the students themselves have helped us tailor our interventions to better meet their needs and be more efficient with our time and resources. The obligation that comes with knowing which students are at risk means that we cannot continue the status quo of failing to extend the right supports to a new population of college students. Consider this a nudge.

A version of this article appeared in the July 6, 2018, issue.
Read other items in New Strategies and Technologies for Advising.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Opinion
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Related Content

Why ‘Nudges’ to Help Students Succeed Are Catching On
Fine-Tuning the ‘Nudges’ That Help Students Get to and Through College

More News

Photo illustration showing Santa Ono seated, places small in the corner of a dark space
'Unrelentingly Sad'
Santa Ono Wanted a Presidency. He Became a Pariah.
Illustration of a rushing crowd carrying HSI letters
Seeking precedent
Funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions Is Discriminatory and Unconstitutional, Lawsuit Argues
Photo-based illustration of scissors cutting through paper that is a photo of an idyllic liberal arts college campus on one side and money on the other
Finance
Small Colleges Are Banding Together Against a Higher Endowment Tax. This Is Why.
Pano Kanelos, founding president of the U. of Austin.
Q&A
One Year In, What Has ‘the Anti-Harvard’ University Accomplished?

From The Review

Photo- and type-based illustration depicting the acronym AAUP with the second A as the arrow of a compass and facing not north but southeast.
The Review | Essay
The Unraveling of the AAUP
By Matthew W. Finkin
Photo-based illustration of the Capitol building dome propped on a stick attached to a string, like a trap.
The Review | Opinion
Colleges Can’t Trust the Federal Government. What Now?
By Brian Rosenberg
Illustration of an unequal sign in black on a white background
The Review | Essay
What Is Replacing DEI? Racism.
By Richard Amesbury

Upcoming Events

Plain_Acuity_DurableSkills_VF.png
Why Employers Value ‘Durable’ Skills
Warwick_Leadership_Javi.png
University Transformation: a Global Leadership Perspective
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin