Microcommitments: Mitigating procrastination with more than a nudge

Abstract

Technological improvements have changed the way class content is delivered and absorbed, with new modes of communication and collaboration creating viable alternatives to the traditional classroom. While online learning has many benefits in terms of greater flexibility and convenience, the lack of face‐to‐face interaction creates potential consequences in the form of greater propensity for procrastination in completing coursework. Microcommitments, defined as small daily tasks accompanied by a soft commitment device delivered via an online platform providing social accountability, increase engagement with course content and have been shown to improve exam performance among students enrolled in online courses. We randomly assigned 276 online students into a treatment or control group and investigate whether reduced procrastination may be a channel contributing to the observed gains in academic performance. Our results support this hypothesis as we document a reduction in procrastination. Students exposed to microcommitments with social accountability are nearly twice as likely to complete at least some of the assigned work more than a week prior to the due date as opposed to leaving all of the work for the last week.