Nudging Students Into Better Grade Outcomes
Despite the proliferation of learning management systems, it is common for students to ask the
instructor their grade during the semester. "Grade Nudge" is a Google Drive based program that indicates
not only the student's current grade, but the possible grade outcomes given various scores.
In a randomized
trial, this treatment has been shown to increase student performance by four percentage points
(e.g. a C+ student performs at a B- level).
Software
Use
Research
In-person Training in Omaha
I will be providing an in-person workshop on
August 22nd at UNO's College of Business. This will cover the Grade Nudge software and UNO specific considerations. Click the button below to read more about the event and sign-up.
Online Instructional Training (with
Zoom)
I will be providing an online demonstration of the Grade Nudge software on
September 3rd. Click the sign-up button below to
select one of the two available times; the scheduling software will automatically e-mail you
connection details and a reminder 24 hours before the event. You can download a calendar invite on
the event confirmation page.
Education Google Apps Scripts Privacy Policy
This site, https://bensresearch.com, links to two Google Apps Scripts intended for use in the education field: 'Grade Nudge,' and 'Create Random Assignments.' These programs are provided free of charge, contain no advertising and are written by me (Ben O. Smith) as a service to the education community. This software is not monetized and never will be monetized.
These programs are Google Apps Scripts, they are hosted by Google. Recently, Google has requested that Apps Script developers post a privacy policy on their website. This is that policy. The policy is very simple. None of the four programs send ANY private information about individual users, about the user's Google account (including Google Drive) back to the developer (me). The apps simply do not collect information. Further, I never will collect such information.
The Apps in question work in a similar way. Each interacts with the user's (teacher's) Google Drive environment to create E-Mails or documents for the user's students. In the case of Grade Nudge, the application accesses (or creates) documents in the user's Google Drive to send grade information to students (usually over E-Mail). Create Random Assignments creates and shares Google Documents (the assignments) with the students specified by the user. These students might be notified by E-Mail of these shared assignments depending on the settings specified by the user.
As described above, the Apps only send E-Mails initiated by the user. Further, no information is collected about the user's Google Drive by the Apps Scripts. Moreover, while the https://bensresearch.com website does use Google Analytics to collect visitor information, Analytics is not used in any of the scripts. The developer does have some aggregated usage information from the Google Chrome Web Store (which Google collects). Google provides the developer the aggregated number of users, installations, uninstalls, and impressions. None of this information is provided at the user level. Google might be collecting usage information, but this would be governed by their own privacy policy.
In short, I'm not collecting any information within any of the Google Apps Scripts. I do have some aggregate information on usage provided by Google. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at bosmith@unomaha.edu.