As learners enter and return to school in greater numbers, higher education struggles with defining and providing support and services that fit the "new traditional" and often-struggling digital age learner. Evidence from new work in cognitive and neuroscience suggests that the brain is still forming well into our 20s and has called for a recognition that adult expectations of learner self-motivation and focus may not align with reality. Add to this a changing social culture of delayed adulthood and responsibility, which is shaping new understandings and needs for fostering persistence in traditional-age, delayed adulthood college students. At the same time, insert a changing population of time-stressed adult students, first-generation students, part-time students, and a growing population of underprepared students. All this together produces a perfect storm of unrecognized support and service needs to ensure that struggling students reach graduation.

With only 55 percent of the students who start at a 4-year institution graduating in six years and only 31 percent of those who start two-year degrees finishing them within three years, questions abound on the nature of self-motivation, resilience, persistence and why one student "stays the course" to graduation while another falls away. This case study expands on early work that outlines how one college is nudging students to greater performance, engagement, and retention by focusing on the very behaviors and mindsets necessary for success.

Read on to learn how Persistence Plus boosted performance among online math students at UWT.