A friend and I have been having a back and forth about improving completion rates of ‘at-risk’ students in both secondary schools and in the early years of university study. By ‘at-risk’ in this scenario, I am referring to (especially in regards to the university study), students who show poor attendance records, students who have little family support or university precedent (those whose parents didn’t attend university), etc. We were discussing evidence from developing nations that could be used in developed, as well as the study suggesting that SMS (text messaging) can improve enrollment rates for low-income students. We discussed some ideas and solutions.

This one always seemed like a bit of an easy fix to me if success is defined as merely improving completion rates by x% (say, by 10-15% which is a significant improvement). It works under the assumption that SMS is an existing, widely used, socially acceptable communication channel and an ‘intervention’ built on that channel would be aligned with existing social practice. Also, there are hundreds of comparable projects on which to build a structure for at-risk students.

So the goal is not to build a new structure, a new technology, or social network or what have you, but rather the sharpest, most direct, most affordable means of intervention. Hence SMS. So the idea is as follows, presented as I wrote it. All one would need would be a willing university or school district, the curricula, schedules, and assignments for each department, and a pool of students and mentors. The technology could be housed off a laptop or, depending on the scope of activity, on a network computer. Most importantly, it would be a smart logic SMS structure, where routing triggers would indicate a particular communication (P2M (peer to mentor), P2P (peer to peer), etc. To get the students involved, they can choose the routing triggers with language that resonates to them. This is about as cheap as it is possible to make it and it scales. So, if this interests you, please find the outline below. Frontline SMS would be a free system (barring texting costs) to use to manage the activity.

General Idea: When navigating new or challenging terrain, all educational theory suggests that we learn best and most resiliently through scaffolding, ie structuring activity in manageable bits to prevent overflow and disengagement (drop-out). Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development addresses this quite convincingly. So the idea here is to provide scaffolds through social interaction, either Peer to Peer, Peer to Mentor, etc. in order to build resiliency to complete formal programs of learning. The ability of the learner to complete the program of learning is not always or even primarily based on the skill that learner shows in the subject area, but rather their ability to use their community for support (emotional or academic). Social interaction is the glue that keeps students engaged.

So matching the most widely available technology (SMS) with some of the most widely available social motivators (compassion, sympathy, support) will generate improved resiliency rates. This project succeeds as it capitalizes on existing technology and existing communication structures (texting) to channel existing social motivation (community support) for community achievement (pass or complete).

Develop an SMS-based mentoring and peer support system that creates (two-way) communication channels to

There are four discrete activities taking place via SMS in this system. Each of these would be triggered by smart logic routing rules according to the categories listed below (Peer to Peer, Peer to Mentor, etc.) For example: The P2P, P2M, M2P represents routing logic. If the student began a text with P2P, it would be routed specifically to the designated Peer group. P2M would be the mentor, etc. Examples texts are below: