Understanding the Use of Academic Status Reports (ASRs) to Support Student Persistence at a Large Public University: A Nested Learning Engineering Approach (Poster 7)

• In Event: From Research to Application: Learning Engineering as a Process for Learning-Sciences-Informed Educational Design

Abstract

Student persistence is a critical concern in higher education (Tinto, 2017) but can be enhanced when faculty interact with students in academic settings (Dwyer, 2017). Academic Status Reports (ASRs) allow instructors at a large public university to interact with students by
providing personalized feedback on their performance. ASRs can be positive (e.g., informing students of satisfactory exam scores) or negative (e.g., informing students of missed assignments). In addition, university support staff (e.g., academic advisors) may be prompted to contact the student when that student receives an ASR. Thus, interactions facilitated by ASRs may increase students’ access to support and their subsequent persistence. Understanding the characteristics of these interactions may inform research and development of student support systems in higher education.
In order to study ASRs, we employed a nested learning engineering approach (Kessler & Totino, 2023), which emphasizes the iterative process of understanding, designing, and implementing educational interventions. The approach begins with the development of foundational questions developed in tandem with stakeholders (e.g., instructors). Once these questions have been initially investigated, the research team can progress to questions larger in scope, scale, or complexity. They might also iteratively return to these foundational questions depending on insights from data collection.
We began our study by holding informal conversations with instructors and staff to develop our foundational questions about the relationship between ASRs and student persistence (e.g,. How do students view ASRs?). Based on these conversations, we developed a survey of students’ knowledge about, views of, and experiences with ASRs and administered it to undergraduate psychology students (n = 372). Approximately 50% of participants self-reported having heard of ASRs; however, responses to an open-ended follow-up question revealed significant variations in depth of knowledge about the system and multiple misconceptions about ASRs (e.g., that they can be viewed by future employers). Additionally, students had diverse experiences with ASRs: of students who stated that they had received an ASR, about 1/3 of students each reported that they had received a positive ASR, a negative ASR, or both a positive and negative ASR. Further, quantitative and qualitative responses highlight nuanced student views of the system. Many students reported that they experienced negative emotions and academic pressure in response to receiving an ASR but also tended to disagree with the statement that receiving a negative ASR meant a student had little hope of passing the class or should drop the class.
Overall, our study revealed that ASRs, despite being designed to support students and motivate changes in their academic behaviors, can prompt both negative and positive reactions which may impact their efficacy in promoting student persistence. Our findings underscore the complexity of using a human-centered early alert system at scale to promote student persistence. Using a nested learning engineering approach, we broke down the challenge of relating ASRs to student persistence into student-specific research questions. Through the learning engineering framework, we offer a roadmap for institutions grappling with similar challenges in relating student support systems to persistence.

Authors

• Megan Imundo, Arizona State University

• Maria Goldshtein, Arizona State University - Polytechnic

• Micah Watanabe, Arizona State University

• Jiachen Gong, Arizona State University

• Nicole Crosby, Arizona State University

• Rod D. Roscoe, Arizona State University - Polytechnic

• Tracy Arner, Arizona State University

• Danielle S. McNamara, Arizona State University