Does that extra email make a difference? Using early-semester targeted outreach to increase academic advising visits

Brigham Young University–Idaho has implemented various strategies to encourage students to seek academic advising, including early-semester outreach using data from the university’s Learning Management System (LMS). In Fall 2022, the office of Career and Academic Advising identified students for outreach based on whether their week four estimated term GPA in the LMS was below 2.5. We used traditional and bias-corrected covariate-adjusted regression discontinuity analysis approaches to assess the size of the intervention effect. While the traditional regression discontinuity analysis approach did not detect a statistically significant effect, the bias-corrected covariate-adjusted approach identified a change in the number of visits that was 237 advising visits per 1000 students higher in the outreach group than in the non-outreach group. This study supports the use of early-semester targeted email outreach to increase student meetings with academic advisors. Warehoused LMS data, well-formulated data reporting infrastructure, and more sophisticated statistical analyses may be helpful in implementing similar outreaches and observing their associated impact.