As part of the skillclouds user research session we discovered there is a very specific time when the majority of students will actually want to access information on their skills, course details and grades – mainly motivated by filling in a CV or application for further study.
This time of readiness is different in all students, be it for a work placement in the first year, a summer holiday job in the second year, or a to assess which parts of a course to take next. This makes it very difficult to predict.
Bombarding students with information before this can actually prove detrimental.
My old colleague Pete Gale from Cogapp gave a recent Sussex HCT group presentation showing information from some projects we had been involved with in the health care sector and the aftermath brought up some interesting parallels.
The readiness to change ruler
Healthcare patients information motivation can be measured on a readiness-to-change ruler, with information being delivered at the point of motivational ‘epoch’.
After the peak is often too late.
Delivering information before users are ready leads to overexposure and a numbness which reduces the chances of the information having any impact.
The same ideas prove true in student motivation. It’s a very difficult thing to predict, so we have an interesting question ;
When are students ready to receive skills information ?
