Study finds that text messaging students significantly increases persistence

Colleagues,
 
Student persistence (retention) in adult basic skills programs is often a challenge. The results of a recent study in the U.K. suggest that one simple strategy that shows promise -- at least for students who have cell phones with an sms text messaging feature -- is to send them encouraging text messages at critical times after enrollment. For details on what kinds of text messages were sent and when, please read the study. Below is an abstract.
 
If you are interested in free or inexpensive software for text messaging, let us know. Several of us in the Technology and Learning CoP can make suggestions based on experience with adult learners in the U.S.
 
Curbing adult student attrition:Evidence from a field experiment*
February 1, 2015
 
Abstract
Roughly 20% of adults in the OECD lack basic numeracy and literacy skills. In the UK, many colleges offer fully government subsidized adult education programs to improve these skills. Constructing a unique dataset consisting of weekly attendance records for 1179 students, we find that approximately 25% of learners stop attending these programs in the first ten weeks and that average attendance rates deteriorate by 20% in that time. We implement a large‐scale field experiment in which we send encouraging text messages to students. Our initial results show that these simple text messages reduce the proportion of students that stop attending by 36% and lead to a 7% increase in average attendance relative to the control group. The effects on attendance rates persist through the three weeks of available data following the initial intervention
 
David J. Rosen
Moderator, Technology and Learning and Program Management CoPs
djrosen123@gmail.com
 

Comments

I've been somewhat successful sending simple messages to phones on a Verizon Wireless plan using email. The recipients are able to reply and I receive those replies as an email with a .txt attachment.

Teachers might find this option preferable to sharing their own personal mobile phone # with students. 

I haven't checked to see if my method works with other wireless providers. If anyone knows other methods of using email to send text messages, please share!

This is what has worked for me. 

I use my workplace email. After collecting cell phone numbers from learners, you can add these individuals to your email contacts.

To create the email address for each learner, type in the entire cell phone number (including area code) with no spaces or dashes then add @vtext.com For example, if a student's email address if (555) 321 - 1111 his/her email address will be 555321111@vtext.com .

After entering individual students to your Contacts, you can create student Groups if you want to broadcast a message to a group of students.

To text a student or students, simply create a new email message and address it using the students' vtext email addresses.

When the recipient replies to your message, you will receive an email with an attached .txt file. Open this to see the response.

I'm sure there are also ways to do this for students using other wireless providers. I imagine you can go to any wireless provider's web site to find out how to do this.

Thanks Mary for sharing this strategy!

  • Do others have suggestions for -- or like Mary, experience in -- sending students broadcast text message reminders?
  • If so, how do you do that without sharing your personal mobile phone number?
  • What kinds of messages do you text?
  • What kinds of reminders or other messages do you find work best?
  • Do you agree that text messaging students could be a good strategy for improving their persistence, as the study in the U.K. found?

David J. Rosen

Moderator, Technology and Learning CoP

djrosen123@gmail.com

I was glad to see this study because in my persistence workshops I suggest that teachers put students in accountability groups (4-6 people).  If someone in that group is missing, they need to be texted and/or instant messaged to find out 1) if they are okay, 2) why they are not in class.  I have found that students will suddenly show up in class if someone contacts them.  I don't usually have the time to do it myself, especially within the first 15 minutes of class, but it made a HUGE difference in regular attendance.  (Persistence for my classes was already really good.)  

On the flip side of this, when I shared this suggestion this past weekend, one teacher shared how a police office came to her class because one of her students had been found dead.  Apparently, the husband took the kids and dry-walled the student into the apartment so she couldn't get out.  According to the instructor, no one had even realized she'd been gone for two weeks and few people even remembered her.  We have to build communities in our adult education class.  No one should ever be missing for two weeks and have no one realize it.

This is building on Mary's post.

From any email, you can text to a phone by typing in the phone number (all 10 characters without spaces or punctuations) and the @ symbol followed by the email extension for the carrier. There is a list of carrier extensions here. For example, if your phone number was 1235551212 and you use Verizon as your phone company, you could text it by emailing 1235551212@vtext.com.

Many teachers worry about sharing contact information, friending students on Facebook, sharing personal email and many other forms of contact outside the school building. Texting through email has many safety nets built in teachers may want to consider. Most important is that the email creates a history log that can be used to illustrate the entire conversation so no one statement can be taken out of place. Even if one party deletes email, the other party (and the email company of course) will have the complete record available if needed. A second point is that many email programs, like Google's Gmail include a threading option. This means that once you start a text message with someone and they reply and the conversation starts going back and forth, the threading option puts all of those conversations into one continuous thread. Effectively, this creates a complete document of the conversation all in one place so you don't have to look around for where that one text conversation was and you don't have to wonder which text came next or before. The threading puts everything in order of how it was sent, so the conversation reads much more like a dialog rather than playing email hide and seek to piece together some consistent flow. One other advantage is that you can establish a class text group and mass text to the entire group. In this way you can send one message or reminder to all of your students that have allowed you to text them in one push of a button! 

I have shared this technology with my students and found that even those without a phone were excited because they could now communicate with those that have smart phones. Although we often feel that all students have a phone, not all of them do and not all phones or features are the same. Some one with a flip phone typing in a Morse code type interface is not on the same communication field as someone that can just speak into their phone to text. I have found that email texting levels the playing field a bit for those not able to have a decent modern phone. 

I have been shocked to find that some students may not say boo in class, even when one on one with very few people around, but if you engage them in text...BOOM! it seems hard to limit their contributions at times. As always, bringing students back to focus on the purpose of the communication needs to be front and center to safe guard all conversations. These are public conversations and they are recorded at many levels and student benefit from reminders of this and appropriate etiquette. 

One last suggestion: When you first text or your student goes to text someone for the first time, please work to have the initial texter identify themselves and the purpose of the text. So many time I get a text from some strange phone number saying, "Yo, whatzup?" and I don't respond because I have no clue who that is or what they want. Then a student in class asks, "Why didn't you respond to my text?" Instead of putting the student on the spot, I remind them that I never respond to messages unless the messenger has identified who they are and what they wish to talk about, then I apologize to the student, "If you already did that and I missed it, I am sorry. Please try re-sending that message later."

Email texting is a powerful tool for any adult education program staff or teacher to embrace. Announcements, encouragements, reminders, or simply just checking in can transform an adult learner's experience in ways the non texting generations may not understand. 

 

Thanks Ed!

As usual, you have some great suggestions.

Ed wrote:

I have shared this technology with my students and found that even those without a phone were excited because they could now communicate with those that have smart phones. Although we often feel that all students have a phone, not all of them do and not all phones or features are the same. Some one with a flip phone typing in a Morse code type interface is not on the same communication field as someone that can just speak into their phone to text. I have found that email texting levels the playing field a bit for those not able to have a decent modern phone.

This is a great point. I would call this a technology inclusion strategy. Although inclusion often means meeting the needs of people with disabilities, for example through Universal Design for Learning strategies that benefit everyone, including those with physical of learning disabilities, you have pointed to another important need, how students who don't have access to a particular technology can be included. Although in many cases students who have smartphones don't have a home computer, you rightly point out that some students (and teachers) don't have a smartphone but do have a computer. I wonder, Ed, if the strategy for linking text messages to emails that you have described will also work from an electronic tablet (and from a phablet -- i.e. a tablet with a built-in phone), and from a smartphone.  I hope that you and others here will share other technology inclusion strategies.

Ed also wrote:

I have been shocked to find that some students may not say boo in class, even when one on one with very few people around, but if you engage them in text...BOOM! it seems hard to limit their contributions at times. As always, bringing students back to focus on the purpose of the communication needs to be front and center to safe guard all conversations. These are public conversations and they are recorded at many levels and student benefit from reminders of this and appropriate etiquette.

I wonder if others here have experienced what Ed describes: 1) Students who are silent in class but "talkative" in texting or e-mailing; 2) The need to discuss with students how to communicate clearly in text messages and email; and 3) The need to discuss texting and email etiquette. Please share your thoughts about, and strategies for dealing with, any or all of these. Perhaps however, for clarity, start a new discussion thread with a new topic header (e.g. "Silent students who madly text", "Teaching clear text messaging", "Texting Netiquette", or whatever you prefer that communicates the new topic clearly.

David J. Rosen

Technology and Learning CoP Moderator

djrosen123@gmail.com

David, you asked about how the use of tablets fit into the email texting for both teachers and students. Every technology is different and each of us have different comfort levels with adapting to each tool. With a tablet (and with smart phones) I have found that any writing is so much easier with the tablets. If you are finger poking, the buttons are typically bigger on the tablets and the predicative text often is better because there is more screen space to share possible words one is typing. The most influential advantage of tablets and smartphones is the voice to text technology. My experiences are limited to the Android voice to text. I have tried to slur my words and stutter and mumble and the technology does an impressive job of predicting what I intended. Once I learned to enunciate a bit and slow my speech down a microsecond, I rarely have to fix a word and I can get text down so much faster than typing. 

Another advantage of Android systems (other than the much lower costs of hardware and apps) is that your computer Google account is instantly linked to your devices. I can do my work from my computer, phone, tablet with almost no drop off in creating new materials or seeing any of the work I have done for the last decade. Think of this in terms of our learners that often feel swamped with responsibility and just forget their device today. No problem, they can just log on to our computer and poof, all their work is there. There are so many other positives, but I need to stick to the question at hand (grin). 

Tablets and smart phones not only work well with the email to texting, they make creation of the text easier because of the high quality predictive text and the voice to text features. If the tools all use Android, access to work becomes seamless between devices. 

Hi Ed,

What a great strategy, thanks for sharing! I teach a career pathways class with 18-24 year olds and text is often the best way to reach them. I like the productivity aspect of the email to text strategy as well. I look forward to trying this out with my students this fall.

Thanks,

Jackie Taylor, Moderator

Evidence-based Professional Development

jackie@jataylor.net | @jataylor10