We’ve always believed that increased communication outside of class will foster a better work environment for students, and ultimately impact their success.

But a study conducted by Harvard Graduate students, Matthew Kraft and Shaun Dougherty, has now proven it. 

By splitting middle and high school classes at a charter school in Massachusetts into treatment and control groups, Kraft and Dougherty were able to measure the differences phone calls and text messages home after school hours actually made.

They found that consistent communication with students and their families, outside the classroom, increases students participation in class, their homework completion rate, and their ability to remain on-task.  Their results found that added communication:

1. Built stronger teacher-student relationships
2. Expanded parental involvement in students studies
3. Increased students motivation in school

Kraft and Dougherty specifically found that,

• Teacher-family communication increased the odds that students completed their homework by 40%.
• Decreased instances in which teachers had to redirect students attention to the task at hand by 25%,
• Increased class participation rates by 15%”

In the teams interviews with the treatment group, they learned that teachers felt that calling and texting home, “foster(ed) a better rapport”, “heightened our relationship” with students, and “helped them to be more effective at classroom management and behavior modification.”

And that only skims the surface of what these graduate students found!

Studies such as this one will help Remind101 continue to pave the way in classroom communication tools.

We want to know if this information is valuable to you! Let us know on Twitter, Facebook or by emailing contact@remind101.com and we’ll gladly follow up this post with more of their findings.