Proven behavioral interventions help with recruitment, retention and completion

November 8, 2016
  • AACRAO Connect
  • AACRAO SEM-EP
Male speaker addressing the audience in a breakout session.
Research shows that 160 characters or less can make a significant difference in college recruitment and retention efforts.
 

Hi, Alex. Have you signed up for University Y’s orientation? The last one is 7/15. Do you need to register? Click here: http://bit.ly/Wn2Xdz Need help? Reply to talk with an advisor.

 

“We need to meet students where they are,” said Ben Castleman, Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy, University of Virginia, and opening plenary speaker at 2016 AACRAO SEM. And right now, students are texting. In addition, he said, those communications need to be timed and tailored to what the student needs at that moment, such as the above example. It's a low-cost, scalable solution to help students navigate the complex processes of higher education enrollment.

 

Applied behavioral science

Castleman is a senior advisor to First Lady Michelle Obama's Reach Higher Initiative, which has developed the Up Next college access tool “that gives high school and college students, parents, and college counselors across the country personalized support on all things college – college search and application, federal student aid, even student loan repayment – all through texting.”

 

Using insights gained through behavioral science, these efforts have had a remarkable, measurable positive impact on helping students through complex processes and critical decision-making junctures, such as: applying for financial aid and supplementary loans, setting up tuition payment plans, paying unanticipated fees for orientation and housing, registering for placement tests, and applying for housing and health insurance.

 

Although every college student faces these tasks, they may be bigger obstacles for low-income students who don’t have the financial resources for unexpected costs and who may not have access to professional help or family experienced with navigating these processes.

 

“These complex processes can derail even hard-working, talented students,” Castleman said, leading to phenomenon such as “summer melt”--when qualified high school graduates who have chosen to and been accepted at college fail to enroll. And the rate of melt is much higher among students of lower socioeconomic groups.

 

Texting works--for now

“Working in deep partnership and close connection with colleges, state agencies, and nonprofits to harness student data, we’ve been able to make our outreach highly personalized and highly salient,” Castleman said. “Because students are bombarded by information, generic alerts are not sufficient to motivate student action.”

 

Using this personalized information, the UpNext initiative is able to reach out to students with specific information that matches where they are in their enrollment process at their particular institution.

 

“We’ve worked really hard to get the details right,” Castleman said. “We spend an ungodly amount of time writing text messages. We have 160 characters to leverage these behavioral science principles to maximize student response and engagement, so we’re refining the content to make it as effective as possible.”
 

Students sign up by texting ‘College’ to 44044. (Castleman encouraged SEM attendees to share the number with students on their campuses.) Once registered, students can get help with tasks such as applying for college, orientation and registration, completing the FAFSA, and understanding loan repayment.

 

Text messaging strategies work for a few reasons, Castleman says. They:

  • Captivate. Each texts demands your attention with a chirp or vibration. In a busy world, text messages break through.

  • Simplify. They reduce complicated information into consolidated, timely bursts.

  • Nudge. Texts prompt students to follow through on specific action, keeping the next step at the top of their mind and helping to prevent procrastination.

  • Connect. They make it easy to find information. Instead of looking up email addresses, meeting in person, or calling someone on the phone, they allow Millennials to communicate in the way they prefer.

 

“These campaigns reduce barriers to one-on-one help,” Castleman says. Studies have shown that 75 to 80 percent of students respond to the initial automated text. And the text messages increased freshmen community college persistence through sophomore year by 14 percent.

 

However, colleges can’t be complacent. Text messaging won’t be the channel of choice forever, Castleman said.

 

“We need to continue to be at the frontier of how young people communicate,” he said. “Going forward, we need to get more out of mobile. Words and phrases won’t cut it. We need to use images, embedded videos, emojs--not text.” Students are also moving to Snapchat, What’s App, Kik, and Facebook Messenger. Within two years, Castleman said, text messages will be the “old” way of communicating.

 

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