Texting may be a new way to keep students engaged with
their education, especially as they move from high school to college. It’s
cheap, available nearly everywhere, and can be used to boost achievement and study
habits, according to Benjamin Castleman.
Castleman, University of Virginia education professor
and author of The 160-Character Solution: How Text Messaging and OtherBehavioral Strategies Can Improve Education,
studied enrollment rates of students who were accepted into college but did not
enroll for fall classes. He and his colleague, Lindsay Page of the University
of Pittsburgh, reported that the number of students who decided not to attend
college reached 40% in some school districts, particularly among lower-income
and first-generation college students.
Castleman and Page used software that could send weekly
text messages to high school graduates with deadline reminders, links to
documents, and connection information for advisors. They found that 70% of
students who received the personalized messages ended up enrolling for the fall
semester, compared to 63% of students who didn’t receive the messages.
Other studies have revealed that texting student
performance information to parents of middle and high school students in Los
Angeles helped increase homework completion rates by 25%. Text messaging was
also found to help lower dropout rates for adult learners in England by a
third.
White House research uncovered similar results. A 2015 report discovered that low-cost text messages and emails got more kids to enroll and
helped college borrowers to manage their student loans better.
“These types of strategies work well with some students
and educational settings and not well for others,” Castleman said in an article
that appeared in The Hechinger Report. “It’s not texting itself that makes
these nudges successful; it’s attending to details like frequency, timing, and
framing of messages.”