Student Effort, Consistency, and Online Performance

Patron, Hilde and Lopez, Salvador - July 2011 - University of West Georgia in Carrollton

This paper examines how student effort, consistency, motivation, and marginal learning, influence student grades in an online course. We use data from eleven Microeconomics courses taught online for a total of 212 students. Our findings show that consistency, or less time variation, is a statistically significant explanatory variable, whereas effort, or total minutes spent online, is not. Other independent variables include GPA and the difference between a pre-test and a post-test. The GPA is used as a measure of motivation, and the difference between a post-test and pre-test as marginal learning. As expected, the level of motivation is found statistically significant at a 99% confidence level, and marginal learning is also significant at a 95% level. 

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ941408.pdf

How the research is incorporated into Akwai's software

One of the eight Sub-Scores AIVC 3.0 outputs is called the Consistency Sub-Score (CS-SS). This score is based around the user’s consistency, and how punctual they were when submitting status updates and progress reports. As explained in the 2011 paper;

The students should learn that it is not the amount of time logged in that is important to get good grades, but how frequent and stable the amount of minutes is. Student advisors should emphasize that “studying hard” (total minutes) is not as important as “studying smart” (consistency).

Akwai will give users a high Consistency Sub-Score (CS-SS) for updating their To-Dos, Tasks, UnProductives, Ratings and Questions at the same time each day. Additionally, the mobile app's reminder features will help students develop the habit of consistency by sending push notifications (phone alarms) at the same time each day/week.