Gamifying the college experience
Pullias Center researchers debut an innovative digital initiative to bolster first-year persistence at CSU Dominguez Hills.
Incoming students at California State University Dominguez Hills have an extra incentive to stay in school this year: a chance to earn fun and useful prizes.
A new campaign called Toros Charge On rewards students for taking small actions to learn about successful college-going habits and helpful university resources. Prizes range from zany stickers to $5 Starbuck’s gift cards to a $1000 scholarship—and are intended to entice students into acquiring the knowledge and skills that will help them succeed in their first year at CSU Dominguez Hills.
“With Toros Charge On!, we’re reaching students where they are—through texts, emails, and other digital platforms,” said Zoë B. Corwin, research associate professor at the USC Pullias Center for Higher Education and the director of this project. “We hope that by gamifying the process of gaining college knowledge, students will have a richer, more productive college experience that helps them persist toward their degrees.”
Toros Charge On! is a new digital initiative of the Pullias Center’s Digital Equity in Education team. Developed in partnership with the education nonprofit Get Schooled, the digital campaign is designed to facilitate deeper engagement on campus and improve college persistence and success for incoming CSU Dominguez Hills students. The initiative uses texting, online content, and gamification strategies such as badge rewards to engage students in the university community and incentivize them to make use of university resources.
“I hope this initiative will achieve an opportunity for students to feel excited, connected, and encouraged as they begin their journey at CSUDH,” said Nicole Rodriguez, interim associate vice president of student success at CSU Dominguez Hills. “The digitized first-semester experience will bring learning to their phones or computers, connecting them to the campus, each other, and the many resources available to them.”
The initiative is funded by a $300,000 grant from the ECMC Foundation, and continues a long-term initiative of Pullias’ Digital Equity in Education team to use digital and game spaces to engage students in learning about college. Begun in 2012 with internal support from the Office of the Provost at USC, the team has since expanded its work with grants from the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation and the TG Foundation.
Most recently, the Digital Equity in Education team developed the Mission: Admission Challenge, a game-based program to incentivize high school students to apply for college admission and financial aid. That approach, funded by a $3.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, was shown to improve school-level FAFSA application completion rates by 7 percent.
Toros Charge On! marks the first time these digital tools have been piloted in the postsecondary space.
“We are excited to pilot the tools that have been proven effective at supporting high school students within a university setting,” said Marie Groark, executive drector of Get Schooled. “Dominguez Hills has lots of incredible programs going on, and our goal is to ensure that incoming first year students are aware of those programs and feel empowered to connect with them. Our approach aims to amplify the work they are doing and provide additional support to students in a format they use frequently.”
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