Background

While the types of interventions offered to students may vary across colleges, the purpose of an EAS is to identify academically at-risk students. This can range from a simple nudge or notification to more “intrusive” individualized approaches. Nudges or notifications can be phone calls, text messages, and/or emails from an early alert staff member to students informing them about their academic behavior.¹

An EAS typically entails a systematic process that includes at least two key steps: alerts and interventions.² Alerts are formal, proactive feedback levers that send “flags” about student behavior to signal to the college that additional support is needed. Flags are activated by academic (e.g., poor class performance on an assignment, low letter grade, absence) and non-academic (e.g., financial issue, inappropriate conduct, lack of transportation) behavior from students to institutional support staff who can intervene.

These interventions are the next step that typically includes some sort of strategic method of outreach to connect students to the appropriate resources to address the issue(s) identified through the alert system. For example, academic interventions may include tutoring, meeting with an advisor, or assigning a mentor to the student.³ Reflective of the literature, many vendors’ EAS features and campus leaders we spoke with go beyond academic performance to trigger early alerts for social/emotional indications.⁴ Such indicators⁵ include, but are not limited to, financial aid support such as emergency grants funded by the CARES Act⁶ or referrals to other supports like mental and medical health care, child care, transportation, housing, and food.⁷

It is important to note that not all EAS are implemented the same way.⁸ Community colleges can use different types of flags and combinations of student behavior data to inform the alert system. In addition, colleges vary in the interventions offered and their alert frequencies. Some update students in real time and others identify students once per semester during midterms.⁹

Most colleges use predictive analytics software developed by a third-party vendor, but some community colleges opt to develop an EAS tool internally to cater to the unique needs of their student body.¹⁰ Yet despite the infinite variation in development and use, EAS typically uses student behavior data, demographics, and self-survey data on students to identify who is likely to struggle academically.¹¹

Four-Year Institutions

Among survey respondents to a 2020 Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education survey, about 40 percent of four-year institutional practitioners reported “improved retention and graduation rates” as a result of using an EAS.¹² However, survey data have limitations due to perceived effectiveness, where national studies on impact analysis of early-alert models find “very little empirical evidence to validate the use of these programs.”¹³

Yet some evidence suggests that early alert interventions are more effective within designated programs (such as STEM programs) or small sub-populations (such as first-year students).¹⁴ Nevertheless, the existing research has produced very little empirical evidence to validate or invalidate the use of EAS. Future research beyond perceptions from surveys are needed.

Two-Year Institutions

The scant number of studies focusing on community college students have given attention almost exclusively to evaluating EAS effectiveness for sub-populations like developmental education and online students.¹⁵ Although community college leaders rate EAS in the top five very effective practices¹⁶ to retain online learners, only 13 percent¹⁷ believe their EAS is a very effective strategy for student retention and completion for the entire student body population. Echoing the collective sentiment from our interviews with community college leaders, the literature suggests EAS are a “well-meaning investment [that] often fails to produce results”¹⁸ on student success outcomes.

From our interviews with third-party vendors, community college leaders, and experts in the field, we identify five of the most common reasons many EAS do not live up to their potential in rendering improved student success outcomes. To support community colleges’ efforts to use EAS to promote student success, we provide the following five recommendations as solutions to pressing challenges, and close with a discussion of a framework to guide equity-minded implementation of EAS.