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Does an E-mail Reminder Intervention with Learning Analytics Reduce Procrastination in a Blended University Course?

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Addressing Global Challenges and Quality Education (EC-TEL 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12315))

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Abstract

Procrastination is a widespread self-regulatory failure. It consists in voluntarily delaying work despite expecting to be worse-off the day after. Procrastination impacts students’ performance and well-being. Therefore it is argued that universities could and should play a more active role in helping freshmen improve their time management. We designed an intervention to scaffold regular work for large university classes in a platform-independent, easily scalable, and transferable manner. Our intervention consisted in sending a weekly e-mail reminding to complete chapter quizzes. These quizzes were closing shortly after the end of the chapter. The content of the reminder e-mails varied across our five experimental groups to additionally include different types of personalised advice. We performed the intervention during one month on 1130 freshmen of a blended university course. We study whether regularly sending e-mails improves work regularity and final performance. We also study the impact the e-mail content on work regularity and performance. As a result, we show that simple e-mail reminders were able to improve regularity in filling quizzes, the total number of quizzes filled, and the progress in overall performance. We also show that e-mail content matters and that complex personalised advice was counter-productive in our intervention.

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Acknowledgement

We thank the teachers of the course for supporting this research, specifically Laurence Rezeau and Frédéric Daigne, CAPSULE and Yves Noël for technical support, the precious, thorough, and timely rereading of Clément Choukroun, and Aymeric Dieuleveut for statistical insights.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Informatique de Paris 6 (LIP6), Sorbonne Université, 75005, Paris, France

    Iryna Nikolayeva, Amel Yessad & Vanda Luengo

  2. CNRS/IN2P3, Université de Paris, 75013, Paris, France

    Bertrand Laforge

  3. Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et des Hautes Energies (LPNHE), Sorbonne Université, 75005, Paris, France

    Bertrand Laforge

Authors
  1. Iryna Nikolayeva
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  2. Amel Yessad
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  3. Bertrand Laforge
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  4. Vanda Luengo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amel Yessad .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganés (Madrid), Spain

    Carlos Alario-Hoyos

  2. Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

    María Jesús Rodríguez-Triana

  3. Open University Netherlands, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Maren Scheffel

  4. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Inmaculada Arnedillo-Sánchez

  5. Graz University of Technology and Know-Center, Graz, Austria

    Sebastian Maximilian Dennerlein

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Nikolayeva, I., Yessad, A., Laforge, B., Luengo, V. (2020). Does an E-mail Reminder Intervention with Learning Analytics Reduce Procrastination in a Blended University Course?. In: Alario-Hoyos, C., Rodríguez-Triana, M.J., Scheffel, M., Arnedillo-Sánchez, I., Dennerlein, S.M. (eds) Addressing Global Challenges and Quality Education. EC-TEL 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12315. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57717-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57717-9_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-57716-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-57717-9

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