Introduction and Evaluation of a Digital Onboarding Tool for Higher Education Students

ABSTRACT This article contributes to current literature by introducing and evaluating a digital onboarding tool for higher education. It presents the content and technical design of the tool, as well as evaluative results. The content structure of our digital onboarding tool was developed based on previous literature regarding student integration and onboarding, and it is divided into four main areas: information units, micro‐interventions, videos, and a digital journal. The technical design of the tool was delivered as a responsive web application for use on different devices. The results of our longitudinal study reveal that, compared to the control group ( N = 40), participants in the intervention group ( N = 43) demonstrated significantly higher increases in informedness, study‐related self‐efficacy as well as lower dropout intention. Besides contributing to current literature by providing a blueprint for a digital onboarding tool for use in higher education, we could demonstrate the benefits of the tool.