3 Lessons About Communicating With Students

Over the past two years, I’ve had the pleasure of leading workshops at colleges and organizations nationwide on the science and art of student communication. In this professional development series, I distill for participants much of the research and insights I’ve shared in Psychology Today and facilitate the application of those ideas to their day-to-day interactions with students. Among the many topics we’ve discussed:

• The ABC²S of goal setting
• The cutting edge of growth mindsets
• The potential and pitfalls of social norms
• Self-distancing to encourage self-help

If you’re in the business of student success, I’m sure you share many of the same communication challenges that our partners discuss in these trainings. It’s difficult to break through the noise and get students to read your email/text/post, and even more difficult to get them to respond in the ways you intend. I want to share with you my three biggest takeaways from teaching behavioral science for student success so that you can begin to make the same impactful changes that colleges and organizations have made following our work together.

1. Get to the point

The first epiphany most people have during my workshops is that their messages to students are way too long. We have an understandable urge to share every detail up front, leaving no question unanswered. But information overload is the easiest way to assure that students don’t read—let alone process—your message. Being brief, direct, and sharing only the most essential details will improve the odds that your students engage in the next step in the process, whether that’s answering a question, completing a form, or showing up at your office door.

But what if you simply must convey something complicated to students? What if they need to know multiple steps for a scholarship application, or must follow different registration directions based on their credit standing? A few suggestions for streamlining this information:

• Put the nitty-gritty details on a website and only include a link in your brief, attention-grabbing message.
• Illustrate a complex process or decision tree as an infographic, rather than a giant block of text.
• Explain what students need to do using multimedia; several of our partners have created awesome YouTube or TikTok videos that students love.

2. Keep it simple

Even better than those suggestions would be to make the process itself simpler. While my participants workshop impactful, evidence-based messages to get students to access resources or complete college requirements, their second epiphany is usually that these things are way too complicated! If you find yourself writing a very long message or one that requires an explanatory webpage or video, this might be a hint that the process itself needs streamlining. Behavioral economists describe this as removing hassle factors, increasing ease, or creating the path of least resistance.

In some cases, of course, the process is out of your control (e.g., FAFSA). But if you have the power to change how something works (e.g., registration; scholarship applications; tutoring sign-ups), those changes will do more good than any finely-crafted message ever could. Some ways to simplify student processes:

• Automatically enroll students into free, beneficial programs rather than requiring any sign-up or renewal process
• Pre-schedule students for important or required touchpoints (e.g., academic advising) rather than asking them to make the first move
• Pre-complete forms for students based on information you already know
• Consider eliminating student-facing processes that could happen behind the scenes or that don’t provide much value

3. There is no perfect message

The final lesson I see participants take away from our collaboration is that there's no one message to rule them all. Different students need different information and different motivations for engagement, or what advertisers call targeted messaging. For example, if you only send registration reminders to students who have yet to register, you help those who need it while also conditioning students that your emails are always relevant and useful. Targeting is a heavier lift than mass communication, but the payoff may be more than commensurate in terms of student response and action.

How messages are framed may also alter how students react. Students have unique help-seeking styles and may accept or avoid help depending on whether it’s provided by professors, staff, or peers. Some students may respond better or worse depending on whether your message uses individualistic or communal language. Behavioral science raises awareness of these psychosocial differences and provides a guide for appealing to students in different ways. But first you must accept there’s no perfect message that will appeal to everyone.

Looking ahead

I’m excited to continue this work this semester, including my first professional development series focused exclusively on college faculty. Not only will students benefit from having behavioral science strategies leveraged in their advising and in their classrooms, but I’ll continue to learn from those I teach about how to better apply behavioral science to remedy these challenges.