Nudging Students Into Better Grade Outcomes

Despite the proliferation of learning management systems, it is common for students to ask the instructor their grade during the semester. "Grade Nudge" is a Google Drive based program that indicates not only the student's current grade, but the possible grade outcomes given various scores. In a randomized trial, this treatment has been shown to increase student performance by four percentage points (e.g. a C+ student performs at a B- level).

Software

Web App (Uses Google Drive)

Use

Instructions Video

Research

Published Research Article

Create Random Assignments

A cloud-based tool to help implement alternative teaching materials

"Create Random Assignments" is a program that allows an instructor to generate a set of assignments where each student gets a random selection of questions based on a question bank.

Software

Web App (Uses Google Drive)

Use

Instructions

Sample Question Banks

Think Like a Freak Stumbling on Wins Soccernomics Scorecasting

Question banks by Jadrian Wooten

Help

E-Mail Schedule an Appointment (over Zoom)

Education Google Apps Scripts Privacy Policy

This site, https://bensresearch.com, links to two Google Apps Scripts intended for use in the education field: 'Grade Nudge,' and 'Create Random Assignments.' These programs are provided free of charge, contain no advertising and are written by me (Ben O. Smith) as a service to the education community. This software is not monetized and never will be monetized.

These programs are Google Apps Scripts, they are hosted by Google. Recently, Google has requested that Apps Script developers post a privacy policy on their website. This is that policy. The policy is very simple. None of the programs send ANY information (private or otherwise) about individual users, about the user's Google account (including Google Drive) back to the developer (me). The apps simply do not collect information of any kind. Further, I never will collect such information.

The Apps in question work in a similar way. Each interacts with the user's (teacher's) Google Drive environment to create E-Mails or documents for the user's students. In the case of Grade Nudge, the application accesses (or creates) documents in the user's Google Drive to send grade information to students (usually over E-Mail). Create Random Assignments creates and shares Google Documents (the assignments) with the students specified by the user. These students might be notified by E-Mail of these shared assignments depending on the settings specified by the user.

As described above, the Apps only send E-Mails initiated by the user. Further, no information is collected about the user's Google Drive by the Apps Scripts. Moreover, while the https://bensresearch.com website does use Google Analytics to collect visitor information, Analytics is not used in any of the scripts. The developer does have some aggregated usage information from the Google Chrome Web Store (which Google collects). Google provides the developer the aggregated number of users, installations, uninstalls, and impressions. None of this information is provided at the user level. Google might be collecting usage information, but this would be governed by their own privacy policy.

Both Google Apps Scripts exclusively use APIs provided by Google and always use these services within the user's own account. For instance, the Grade Nudge Apps Script uses Google's MailApp class to send email on behalf of the user and Google's DriveApp class to interact with the user's Google Drive (other Google classes are used to interact with Google Spreadsheets and Documents). In essence the Apps Scripts are simply a set of instructions that interact with Google's services (within the user's context) and are contained within the Google ecosystem. The Apps Scripts do not interact with any other services (other than Google) or websites and do not send data to any services other than Google's. Simply put, the only way that data could be unintentionally sent is if Google's services were compromised.

Google has indicated that because the Apps Scripts use Google User Data they want some indication of how this data will be protected. As mentioned above, the Google Apps Scripts operate within the Google ecosystem and do not send data to any other service. Thus, the only data that is generated exists within the user's Google account. Thus, there is no data sent outside of the user's account to protect.

In short, I'm not collecting any information within any of the Google Apps Scripts. I do have some aggregate information on usage provided by Google. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at bosmith@unomaha.edu.

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