A little push in the back: nudging students to improve procrastination, class attendance and preparation

Procrastination is a prevalent problem in higher education, leading to lower performance. Procrastination is often linked with low class attendance and little class preparation, which are two important foundations to process learning materials. Hence, interventions are recommended to overcome procrastination. One promising intervention is nudging. Based on the motivational Expectancy-Value Theory, the current study aims to (1) examine the change in procrastination throughout a semester and (2) investigate whether a nudging intervention can reduce procrastination, increase class attendance and class preparation, and, subsequently, improve performance. A random assignment to treatment experiment is executed in the exercise classes of a first-year undergraduate course (N = 211). The treatment group receives five different nudges throughout the semester, the control group receives no nudges. Nudging was implemented by including an additional sentence (with a link) in the announcements on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Procrastination is measured four times. Class attendance and class preparation are measured weekly. Results show increasing procrastination in the first part of the semester, followed by decreasing procrastination. Additionally, simply providing students with nudges does not yield beneficial effects. However, students clicking more intensively on the nudges report lower procrastination and higher class attendance and preparation. Moreover, the decreased procrastination and increased class preparation caused by intensively clicking on the nudges subsequently resulted in higher performance. This paper contributes to higher education practice by informing educators about the change in procrastination throughout a semester and by offering educators and policy-makers information about the effect of nudging on procrastination.