Characteristics of Students Who Opted In to Use the Boost Mobile App as an Educational Support Service

Abstract

This exploratory study aimed to investigate the characteristics of students who opted-in to use Boost, an automated student support mobile app and compare characteristics of non-Boost users. Boost is a mobile app that integrates with the Learning Management System (Canvas) and provides support services aimed at improving student behavior and success. At the start of the Spring 2019 semester at Indiana University, instructors were invited to opt-in for Boost to be available to their classes. Instructors who opted-in invited their students to use Boost. Our multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) compared those who opted-in for automated support with those who did not (n=158 courses). Findings reveal that opt-ins were more likely to be Asian, International, and despite having higher college entrance exam scores and being farther along in their studies, opt-ins were slightly lower performing than their peers who did not opt-in. A profile of Boost users will help university administration, student support services, and instructors make data-informed decisions on optimal use of Boost.

The influence of automated praise on behavior and performance.

“…Student participants self-selected to download a mobile app to help them keep up with online coursework, and while this sample should exhibit differences from the full population of all Indiana University students, it should be representative of the population who would opt-in for these kinds of automated student support services (Andrews et al, 2020;Motz, 2019). Condition assignment was at the individual level; participants received the same assigned treatment in each of their enrolled courses.…”