Does that extra email make a difference? Using early-semester targeted outreach to increase academic advising visits

Area of Science:

• Higher Education
• Educational Psychology
• Data Science in Education

Background:

• Universities implement strategies to boost student engagement with academic advising.
• Early-semester outreach, leveraging Learning Management System (LMS) data, is a key strategy.
• Identifying at-risk students via academic performance metrics is crucial for timely intervention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of targeted, early-semester email outreach on student engagement with academic advising.
• To compare the impact of traditional versus bias-corrected regression discontinuity analysis in assessing intervention effects.
• To quantify the increase in advising visits resulting from the outreach intervention.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from Brigham Young University-Idaho's Learning Management System (LMS).
• Identified students for outreach based on a week four estimated term GPA below 2.5.
• Applied traditional and bias-corrected covariate-adjusted regression discontinuity analysis.

Main Results:

• Traditional regression discontinuity analysis showed no statistically significant effect.
• Bias-corrected covariate-adjusted analysis revealed a significant increase of 237 advising visits per 1000 students in the outreach group.
• The intervention demonstrated a measurable positive impact on student advising engagement.

Conclusions:

• Early-semester targeted email outreach is an effective strategy to increase student meetings with academic advisors.
• Sophisticated statistical methods, like bias-corrected regression discontinuity analysis, are essential for detecting subtle intervention effects.
• Leveraging LMS data and robust data infrastructure can enhance the implementation and evaluation of student support initiatives.