English Failed Student Encouragement Study
Prepared by Jason Whittle
AAB 355-R • 4600 S Redwood Road • (801) 957-4043
August 31, 2018
Abstract
This study originated from a previous study on students who fail multiple attempts of the same course. In the previous study it was found that while there are many students who fail courses multiple times, roughly two thirds of students who failed a course in that study never reattempted the failed course. It was unknown if these students were possibly ‘switching’ majors or finding some other way around having to retake a course they performed poorly in the first time. However with English 1010 there are no work arounds. Student who tested into Engl 1010 have to pass this class to complete any degree program at SLCC or other accredited college level program. Because of this restriction on the Engl 1010 requirement the course was selected for a nudge experiment. The purpose of this experiment was to notify possibly discouraged students that failing Engl 1010 is common, SLCC has many resources to help student have success in Engl 1010 as well as their other courses and that we noticed/care that they struggled in a course.
It was hoped that a relatively simple (from a logistics perspective) nudge and reminder to the students that SLCC cares about their success would lead to reduced enrollment attrition in this vulnerable group. Letting students know they are not an outlier and important was thought might be encouraging enough for students to want to reengage.
Simple results of the study:
• The students in the treatment group enrolled in Spring 2018 classes 7% less than the student in the control group. 45.2% versus 52%.
• Even when focusing on only students who were either talked to directly (answered the phone) or had a message left on their phone only 45.6% of them re-enrolled.
• Calling students with an encouraging message in the manner done in this study was ineffective and could have possibly led to to lower student Spring 2018 enrollment for the treatment group.
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