Increasing Parents’ Engagement on EdTech Platforms: Evidence from the Field

Increasing Parents’ Engagement on EdTech Platforms: Evidence from the Field Simple, well-designed digital nudges can meaningfully increase parents’ participation in early childhood education, according to a large-scale study conducted with Rocket Learning in India. In “Increasing Parents’ Engagement on EdTech Platforms: Evidence from the Field,” Goyal, Okuno, Singhvi, and Singhvi examine peer- and self-comparison messages delivered through digital educational communities. In a randomized controlled trial involving nearly 154,000 parents, peer-comparison nudges increased the average number of parents active each day by 13.5%, whereas self-comparison nudges increased it by 8.0% relative to no nudge. Building on these insights, they develop a data-driven targeting policy that selects the nudge best suited to each parent. A second trial involving 122,000 parents shows that, whereas the targeting policy performs comparably to the best uniform policy on average, it identifies a substantial subgroup—8.8% of parents—for whom targeted nudging increases engagement by 5.4% over the uniform approach. The findings offer nonprofits and policymakers a scalable, low-cost tool for strengthening parental engagement, highlighting both the potential and limitations of personalized nudging.