All About U
The Challenge UNIAID is a London-based independent charitable organisation set up in 2001. All the services UNIAID provides to students are free of charge, so the organisation relies on support from donors and sponsors. These include HSBC Bank. It is UNIAID’s mission to help students cope with the financial hurdles to higher education. Despite significant Government investment there has been no noticeable shift in the social classification within Higher Education (HE) for thirty years. The likelihood of an improvement was decreased further on 27th Jan 2004, when the government voted in top up fees (by the narrowest of margins) and 9 out of every 10 universities in England decided to charge the maximum tuition fee of £3,000 from 2006. Top-up fees and student loans have the greatest impact on students from lower income families who are most prone to being debt averse, making those traditionally less likely to attend higher education even less likely to do so. In 2005/06, a total of £386m was spent on widening participation, and improving retention rates through bursaries. A 2006 report by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, found that 89% of HE institutions surveyed said progress in widening participation over the past four years had been strong. However, government statistics showed that the overall trend was still flat. A year-long, UK-wide piece of research by Universities UK published in February 2003, provided hard evidence of previously anecdotal assumptions that the fear of getting into debt was deterring potential students – particularly those from lower socio-economic backgrounds – from entering higher education. In particular the survey uncovered that: - 84% of school leavers involved in the survey believed that student debt deters entry into HE.
- Concern over student debt is greatest among the poorest and lone parents.
- Debt aversion deters the participation in HE of lower-income groups.
- There is a general lack of information on student financial support, and under-represented groups find it most difficult to access.
The Solution Essentially the problem was not so much a financial issue as an awareness issue – UNIAID needed to develop a means of raising awareness of available student financial support. The strategy was simple: - Understand what it takes to make a 16-19 year-old learn about money management.
- Create a learning intervention that successfully educates and change the perceptions of these learners.
- Use viral marketing to get as many potential HE students engaged and learning as possible.
Getting people to take non-mandatory e-learning programmes has been a challenge that corporate training departments have grappled with for over a decade; mostly with limited success. So to get teenagers to engage in a non-mandatory e-learning programme and to learn for long enough to change their knowledge and attitudes towards HE was never going to be easy. An online, interactive, role play and scenario-based approach to learning was chosen as this would give students an engaging experience of the realities and challenges of university life beforehand. The solution included Student Survivor - an online game that conveys key facts about student finance (bursaries, loans, grants, repayment thresholds etc) secreted around a gameplay environment. Student Calculator - this interactive and intuitive calculator tells prospective students their exact entitlement to statutory support and allows them to build a full lifestyle profile. The fact that the learning materials were competing for 16-19 year olds’ free time was taken into account across the board in the design, i.e. concept, language, interface, look and feel, use of rewards etc. A series of tools would be designed, each with slightly different purposes as outlined below. Epic’s lead designer worked collaboratively with a PhD student at UCL. The Outcome The results far exceeded all expectations, especially with Student Survivor:
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Intervention
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Number of learners
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Student Survivor
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- 2,082,712 users since launch.
- Average playing time: 9mins, with many using it for up to an hour.
- Average pages per visit: 2.5 - so high interaction with the game.
- Sustained popularity - still (2007) being used by 3824 people per day on average.
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Student Calculator
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- 44,095 visits in the first 9 months.
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All About U
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- 34,569 users in first 6 months.
- Average pages per visit: 3.6, i.e. high engagement of users with the tool.
- UNAID is seeing a month-by-month increase in users.
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All About U The post-training questionnaire results from All About U were based on degrees of agreement with statements provided (max score of 5). This short survey was based on a model provided by UCL Psychology Department and implemented by Archipelago. Actual scores against those UNIAID expected to see without training can be seen below.
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Statement
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Forecast score without training*
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Actual score after training
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Confidence: I am confident about managing my money at university
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2.01 - UNIAID knew this was low.
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3.42
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Understanding: I have a broad understanding of student finance
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1.08 - Research suggested this would be low.
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3.11
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Concern: I am worried about managing my money at university
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5.00 - Shortage of money is students' number one concern.
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2.94
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Confidence: I am confident about managing my money at university
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2.01 - UNIAID knew this was low.
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3.42
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Credit cards: the dangers outweigh the benefits
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2.00 - From the focus group meetings it was clear students would more often than not defend their use of credit cards.
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4.17
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Approach: Financial simulations/games are a useful way for me to learn about managing my money
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4.00 - Expected to be high.
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4.08
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Quality: I would recommend All About U to friends
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1.0 - Needless to say, without experiencing the learning, they were unlikely to recommend it.
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4.27
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Table 1: Results from post-training perception survey *Forecasts based on focus group work on themes illustrated in many surveys (e.g. UNITE-MORI Student Living Experience (2002-2007) Student Income and Expenditure Survey, Universities UK 2004, NUS Student Cost Survey 2003, RBS/Natwest Survey 2006) This programme was all about improving the likelihood of potential students from lower income families attending HE. To assess effectiveness in this respect, UNIAID conducted a survey of 1,000 16-18 year olds at local state schools to see whether this approach to learning influenced their likelihood of going to university. Although surveying a captive audience within a school will never be an exact representation of the sort of audience you get online through viral marketing, this approach to evaluation did show that 97% of those asked would be more likely to go to university as a result of the training. The programme was originally only targeted to reach 25,000 people, however Student survivor alone engaged over two million learners, and got them to learn for an average of nine minutes. UNIAID and its partners are extremely proud of this achievement. This programme really understood what it takes to make a student learn, without thinking they’re learning. The use of a broad panel of stakeholders and extensive feedback from literally thousands of users during the design process meant that the team designed a course based on a detailed understanding of how to inspire 16-19 year olds to engage in a subliminal learning intervention.
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