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The Well-Balanced Nudge: How to Impact Behavior without Limiting Choice
From slicing apples to sending texts, education professionals have drawn from a growing suite of behavioral insights to design interventions that positively influence student behavior. Nudging can take on a variety of forms that range in strength and scale, but with such an adaptable concept comes the need to prevent confusion or unintentional misuse in practice. While behavioral interventions are rightfully discussed for their potential to achieve large-scale change at low costs, it’s also worth underscoring the importance of implementing nudges with fidelity. Ethical nudges should be designed with the intention of benefitting those being nudged, and they should never be misleading, coercive, or restrictive. As illustrated in a satirical cartoon from the Behavioral Scientist magazine, a “gentle tap of good sense” falls neatly in the center of the nudge continuum, whereas “feather of statistical insignificance” and “bat of paternalistic overreach” lie on opposite ends. In this post, NASPA's Research and Policy Associate Alexa Wesley offers a few suggestions for ways student affairs professionals can strike the right balance on the nudging scale.
Posted on April 19, 2018 at 03:06 PM by Research & Policy Institute
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April 16th NASPA Policy Update
This post provides relevant higher education updates at the state and federal levels between 4/10/2018 and 4/16/2018.
Posted on April 16, 2018 at 07:56 AM by Research & Policy Institute
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Culture of Respect CORE Evaluation 3rd Edition: What’s New?
The CORE Evaluation is a detailed self-assessment survey organized around the six pillars of the Culture of Respect CORE Blueprint. This post reviews new areas of content on the newly released 3rd edition of the survey and how they reflect what is happening in the field.
Posted on April 12, 2018 at 12:24 PM by Research & Policy Institute
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Institutions’ Use of Data and Analytics for Student Success: Results From a Landscape Analysis
NASPA-Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, the Association for Institutional Research (AIR), and EDUCAUSE have conducted a national landscape analysis to examine how institutional research (IR), student affairs, and information technology (IT) professionals are working together to support students. The three higher education associations jointly developed and launched a national survey of their memberships to identify trends in the types of student success data projects that institutions conduct, the structures in place for sharing data among multiple users, the level of coordination across functions, and how institutions are using data to inform interventions and program delivery. This report reflects responses from nearly 1,000 IR, student affairs, and IT professionals across public, private, two- and four-year institutions across the United States and concludes with four recommendations for improving and executing an institution-wide, data-informed strategy for student success.
Posted on April 10, 2018 at 02:31 PM by Research & Policy Institute
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April 9th NASPA Policy Update
This post provides relevant higher education updates at the state and federal levels between 4/3/2018 and 4/9/2018.
Posted on April 9, 2018 at 12:20 PM by Research & Policy Institute