Daily public commitments got more online students to hand in work early

The study

1. 01

   Who took part

   276 students in an online economics course at a large US state university. A bit over half were women.

2. 02

   What they did

   For three weeks, everyone got a text each weekday morning with a small course task of up to 5 minutes. One group got the task in an app. There they tapped to commit to doing it that day and got a check-back message in the afternoon. They also saw a feed and leaderboard of what classmates had promised and done. The other group got the same task as a plain text.

3. 03

   What happened

   Before the trial, about 1 in 3 students in each group handed in at least one assignment more than a week early. During it, this was about 27 in 100 in the commitment group, against 18 in 100 in the plain-text group. Once background factors were taken into account, the difference was less clear-cut.

What the study found

1. Helped

   Students who committed daily in front of classmates more often handed in some work over a week early.

   • Rule: Ask someone to expect youtested
   • Rule: Share your progress with someonetested
   • Rule: Compete or compare with otherstested
   • Rule: Get a reminderused
   • Rule: Keep the daily version tinyused

   Randomised trial of 276 online economics students at a US university · vs the same daily task as a plain text · behaviour was recorded · ⚠ only counted people who finished; summary claims more than the results show

Source