Lessons Learned From the Implementation of a Texting Program Designed to Reduce Summer Melt

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 5:10 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Higher Education Reimagined: Technology and Institutional Characteristics in the 21st Century (Table 13)

Abstract

Summer melt, when students with college plans do not matriculate after high school, affects between 8 and 40% of college-intending students - disproportionately affecting students from low-income backgrounds. We present the implementation of a text intervention on college enrollment for low-income students. We collected time-stamped data for the tasks associated with each text nudge, interview, and transcript data from the texting platform. Results vary across states and by text messages. For example, treatment students were 17% more likely than their peers to attend an initial advising session after receiving the text nudge. These results advance our understanding of the obstacles students face before college and enable states and other stakeholders to design more specific interventions to target these problems.

Authors

• Elisabeth Davis, American Institutes for Research

• Christina LiCalsi, American Institutes for Research

• Laura Stein, American Institutes for Research

• Amani Talwar, American Institutes for Research

• Scott Houghton, University of Iowa

• Jill Bowdon, American Institutes for Research