Nov 15, 2022
At ideas42, brain and behavioral science are not theoretical or abstract. In this episode, Cassie Taylor, Principal Behavioral Designer, shares how she uses human-centered design to apply and scale behavioral insights in post-secondary education. Cassie highlights how context is key – everything from systemic racism to the seemingly innocuous ‘default’ options can hinder adults in their pursuit of learning – and offers concrete frameworks and strategies for generating change.
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This show is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton Jr.
Theme music: ‘Pretty Face’ by Una Walkenhorst.
Read transcripts for the episode below.
MEG
[INTRO MUSIC] Hello, and welcome to Shift the Power: A Learning-Centered Podcast, where we talk about the revolutionary power of a learning-centered approach. Through this podcast, we hope to inspire creative thinking and provide practical tools and techniques to deepen learning through dialogue.
TYLERÂ
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Shift the Power. I’m your host, Tyler Phillips and today I’m joined by Cassie Taylor, a Principal Behavioral Designer at ideas42. And Cassie is here to talk about her work with applying and scaling behavioral insights in post-secondary education. Welcome, Cassie.
CASSIEÂ
Hi, Tyler, it’s really good to be here.
TYLERÂ
So great to have you. To start us off, could you just tell us a little bit more about yourself and your organization, ideas42.
CASSIEÂ
You bet – ideas42 is a nonprofit that applies insights from behavioral science research for social impact. And we were founded, gosh, over a decade ago now by a group of academics who really wanted to take what they’re researching in their lab and bring it out into the real world to help more people follow through on their best intentions. And a lot of what we look at is when people’s behavior seems weird or strange, or it doesn’t quite make sense from the outside, maybe they’re not doing something that they’d benefit from or they’re making a choice that’s not in line with their long-term interests. And behavioral science really helps us hone in on what about that space that they’re operating in might be influencing that behavior. And knowing about the context is helpful for us, because we can’t change what’s in people’s minds. We can’t change psychology, but we can change our context. So it allows us to really thoughtfully design contexts that more effectively serve the people we’re trying to help. So ideas42 takes that approach to all the work we do. And we work both domestically and internationally, on a range of topics from civic engagement to global health, economic justice to global governance, we’re really trying to have an explicit focus on inequality in everything we do and trying to address those root causes. Yeah, I’ve been at ideas42 for over five years now focusing on postsecondary education. And our goal on that team, is really, we know still in the US that college degrees create economic opportunity, and we want more people, especially people from historically underrepresented groups to be able to access and efficiently complete those high quality college degrees that just open up doors for them. So our team look works with colleges or college systems to improve equitable access, address student persistence, or help remove barriers on students pathway to graduation and beyond.
TYLERÂ
That is awesome. Thank you for that. I love to focus on equality, and I know from experience working with ideas42 way back probably 10 years ago or so. And I was at a financial inclusion, a financial capability organization here in New York City. I got to work with one of your colleagues, Katie Davis closely. Yeah, that was just a lovely experience, and I love the thoughtfulness that you brought to the process. In that case, it was more focused on marginalized communities here in New York City around financial empowerment. So I have first-hand experience working with the ideas42 team. And yeah, I can vouch that it’s a great group, for sure. I was just wondering if maybe you could tell us a little bit more just to give our listeners a sense about the types of specific projects that you’ve worked on any favorites pop up when you think about some of your recent projects, you’ve had a hand in?
CASSIEÂ
Yeah, you know, one of my favorite recent projects was getting to work with the Southern New Hampshire University. And they’re one of the largest online degree programs and we got to partner with them to address barriers to student persistence. They’ve done so much really great thinking about how to design a college system that works for students rethinking the term model and how classes work and how tuition and fees were trying to make it really accessible to a broader range of students. And it was a privilege to partner with them to do more deeper behavioral research on why some students still struggle to make it through their first couple of terms and to get to design targeted solutions to those challenges. And so, as a really concrete example, we found that students often don’t proactively reach out for help. This is so common, we all struggle to ask for help and to even know when we need that help to be asking for. But this means that advisors who are in a great position to support those students just might not know how to help until it’s too late. So what we proposed was a design for an interface for frequent light touch check ins, we call this a temperature check for students to easily let their advisors know how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. So advisors can more easily spot struggling students. That project was really great because as you know, remote learning has been gaining traction for years. But since the start of the pandemic, it’s just even more relevant. Tat traditional model of synchronous in person campus learning, it’s just outdated it and that doesn’t work for a lot of today’s students. So this was a good example of how it’s on us to think about how to support students in a remote environment, both in the classroom broader than that as well.
TYLERÂ
Awesome. Awesome. You know, one thing comes to mind right away for me, as I hear you explain that. Wth the learning-centered approach and in a lot of the consulting work that we do with clients, we usually start with what we call a discovery process. Which is, yeah, a lot of everything you can imagine, I’m sure you’re very well versed in this, but interviews, observations, surveys, just talking to as many people as you can about what the scenario is, what the situation is. I’m just curious, could you tell us a little bit more about your process that you use at ideas42, and or like something that you did specifically to just like, hear from all the stakeholders and participants, just how you think about that.
CASSIEÂ
You know, we really try and listen to people on the ground throughout our process, one of the core parts of behavioral science and applied behavioral design is recognizing how context influences people’s decisions and actions. And so all of our projects are just this sprint to learn as much about the context as we possibly can. And we can come in as ideas42, really knowing how to take a systematic approach, and spotting how psychology can interact with the context, but no one understands the context better than the people on the ground dealing with it. So it’s on us to try and learn from them as much as possible, how we’re doing that. And we do that from our partners and the organizations we work with at the beginning, middle and end of the project, we do it with the direct users who will be benefiting from the work, it’s constantly embedded throughout our work trying to listen and learn from what’s on the ground. One thing that we’ve been approaching a little differently lately is realizing instead of us trying to learn about the context from them, so that we can give recommendations, we’ve realized it might be more efficient and more impactful for them to learn about behavioral science from us. So they can design their own solutions, because they’re the contextual experts. You know, I shared an example of a project I worked on. But what I’m really excited about right now is a lot of our capacity building and training workshop where we’re delivering workshops and trainings and coaching to college administrators to help them build their own skills in applied behavioral design. Because if the context is tripping students up, they’re in a much better position than we are to notice those aspects of the context. And all we need to do is help them know what to look for and what to do with it once they’ve seen that in their own worlds.
TYLERÂ
Nice. Yeah, put the power and the tools in their hands, is what I’m hearing. That’s great. One thing that caught my eye about the applied behavioral science work is that it’s really intended to create change. And you’re very intentional about that I’ve noticed in many of your materials, and the projects that ideas42 works. But yeah, maybe you could just speak a little bit more about how you think about creating change, because at the end of the day, that’s really what I think our collective approaches are all about. You want to see folks in a different spot than they were before our organizations entered.
CASSIEÂ
Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. And I think it’s a core reason why we split off from academic research labs in the first place. Tat generating insights is so valuable and important, and I’m so glad we have that foundational research to build upon. But what ideas42 tries to do is take those insights, and not necessarily generate a perfect publishable academic paper from it, but to make change in people’s lives, and have real people benefit from this work, even if it isn’t as clear and experimental approach. And the way we approach all our projects really is exactly what you said, like stating that intention, what is the change you’re trying to see upfront and having that be your guide post throughout the entire project. So we always start by defining the problem really carefully. What do we want people to do that they’re not doing now? We want to make sure that’s measurable and observable. We’re not in the business of trying to change hearts and minds. We’re not trying to make sure students feel like they belong. We want to know, are they going to enroll in the next term? Are they going to succeed in their courses? Are they going to graduate on time and get that degree? So once we’ve defined the problem, then we look really closely at the students’ context to identify what’s tripping them up. And you know, I keep mentioning context throughout this, it’s going to be the word I use most frequently. But that lets us figure out why is that behavior not happening? Maybe it’s something preventing them from paying attention, or they’re choosing not to do something but that’s influenced by incomplete or biased information, or maybe they want to do something, but it’s really hard to follow through with that intention. And so we look for those explanations to try and identify what is triggering that issue. And only then do we start to design solutions. We’re an applied behavioral design firm. But in my opinion, the design part is, that’s the straightforward part of the project if we’ve done good, up to that point. Once you know exactly what is causing a student to get tripped up it, it’s not rocket science to think of how to change that part of the context there. So all of our designs really stemmed directly from what is the problem, and why is that problem happening? Now ideas42 leverages so much research and insight development from behavioral science, and that is so powerful, but personally, I think this systematic approach to problem solving is just as, if not more so, powerful than that.
TYLERÂ
Yeah, it’s funny, you mentioned the word powerful. You know, one of my favorite things about the modest amount that I know about behavioral design is like how small little changes or like little adjustments can be, but the impact they can have are quite large. Like, I’m just curious, like, from your experience, is there anything that jumps out that is almost like laughable, like how small a change was needed, or something that was unearthed like, oh, this was just in the wrong place, or something was the wrong color, anything come to mind?
CASSIEÂ
We find a lot of those little things where ways in which you can change how information is presented, we call that choice architecture a lot or judging what the default is, we know, for example, a lot of people are more likely to stick with the default stick with the status quo, and you can still make it easy for them to opt out. But switching whether they have to opt out to follow through or opt in can have a really big impact. And then we also know that like hassles can trip people up; a tiny hassle in a process can cause an outsized impact in people’s ability or inability to follow through. We often think, oh, if someone doesn’t apply for financial aid, or doesn’t go to tutoring services, then they must not want it that much. You know, we told them about it, and it’s on them. But then you realize that you’re asking them to fill out a form, mail it or drop it off at a different office. And those little hassles, even like finding a stamp can create an outsized barrier to follow through. And this happens for all of us. How many times have you not gotten around to like paying that extra parking ticket or something? Because you needed a stamp? And how often do we mail letters anymore? I don’t have stamps on hand as easily. So these things can trip us up. But something I’ve been thinking about a lot more is behavioral science really did gain a lot of popularity with the magic of the nudge and how this cost-effective low-impact change can have really big impacts on people’s behavior. And isn’t that amazing how big a change we can make with such a tiny thing. But that’s not really enough to actually address the problems that people are facing. And I think it does a disservice to just keep applying these little band aids rather than looking at the bigger root issues. And I think, where the future of behavioral science is saying, How can we take all these insights to bigger, more systematic questions and see that it is powerful enough to enter those conversations. And it doesn’t have to be limited to just the nudge. No, I was just reading an article this morning from MDRC. That was talking about what makes interventions for community college students most impactful, like what are the ingredients? What are the solutions that really drives success? More than anything else, they found that the comprehensiveness of the intervention was what determined student’s success. That they looked at all of its components and found that more so than any one component, it’s how many components were stacked together, that really determined student’s success. Which makes sense, students need a lot of things. There needs to be supports, there needs to be financial support, there needs to be tutoring and peer engagement and consistent, we call it “guided pathways”, where you know which courses to take. And thinking about putting all of these together and really creating a holistic package for student success. That’s way more impactful than any tiny change that we can be making in the wording or the defaults of information.
TYLERÂ
Yeah, that was the word that was coming to mind for me – the holistic- holisticness, the comprehensiveness. Part of what I’m curious about, just for our listeners, who, you know, are designers and facilitators and consultants, mainly working in their own organization or working with clients to create change, either through training or in other ways. I’m curious about some of the tools that you use and the formats and structures, and you shared one, actually ahead of this, which really, I highlighted into these three components of: attention, intention and action. Could you speak into that a little bit more? I think that’s really interesting.
CASSIEÂ
It is. And I have found that this is one of the most helpful frameworks for myself, for my teams, and when we teach college administrators how to take a behavioral perspective – it’s really breaking behavior down into its components. And when we don’t see the outcome we want, when someone’s not doing something that we think they would want to do – you know, there could be a breakdown at any one of those three stages. And figuring out which stage is getting in the way helps us figure out what solution to develop. So it’s a really quick way to- to diagnose what the problem is, and come up with a targeted design. So for example, if it’s a problem with attention, then how can we break through the noise and make sure people notice? We have limited attention, all of us have that cognitive bandwidth capacity that we’re dealing with. So if it’s a problem with attention, the question is, how can we break through the noise and make sure people notice? We all have limited cognitive bandwidth, we can’t pay attention to everything that’s going on around us. So it’s really a question of: Option A, how do you make sure this is one of the things that people notice? Or Option B, how can you remove the need for someone to pay attention at all? How can you make sure that, like I said earlier about defaults, maybe you can set a smart default that will apply even if someone doesn’t engage with the decision at all, or send reminders, so they don’t have to remember on their own. Just lower that barrier for attention. And the second bucket, you mentioned: intention. So that’s the choices we make. Are people making the choice that they would want to make in a perfectly unbiased environment? We all know that if you’re going to the grocery store, and you’re trying to pick out the new peanut butter, and there are just so many options on the shelf, which one do you end up picking? Probably the one that you always do. We’re really influenced by our previous habits, our previous choices, the status quo, the choices of people around us, which one is just at the front of the shelf at eye-level and seems easiest to choose. None of that is the one we actually want to pick. So when we think about intention formation, we think about how we can help people get to the choice they want to make quickly and easily. So this- it looks like cutting out irrelevant choices, or just making it easier for people to compare apples to apples and hear what people around them are doing to know what’s normal and what’s expected. And then that third part is about taking action. So often, we want to do something we want to go to the gym more, we want to change our habits in our daily lives. But we don’t do so. So how can we make it easier for people to follow through with their best intentions. And even small hassles can create outsize barriers. So a lot of what we think about with action issues are simplifying and facilitating the task. How can we make it easy and simple, help people do it right in the moment, provide help, send them reminders? All that can make a huge difference. So one tool that we use is breaking things into attention, intention and action, because it’s pretty easy for you to get a sense of which of those is the problem and then that helps you figure out what the right solution is. Providing an action solution isn’t going to help if people aren’t even engaging with the choice in the first place.
TYLERÂ
I want to move us along to something that I heard you say when describing behavioral science in the past. You said behavioral science is described as how the context around us interacts with our innate psychology and the small things we could do to help us behave differently. And that’s kind of what we’ve been talking about thus far. I’m curious how you think about this in a learning environment. I mean, you mentioned actually a focus for ideas42 is going to be, or is already training, capacity-building, helping learners, giving them the tools so that they can work through a process and kind of unearth their own solutions. In our work at Global Learning Partners, we think a lot about the people, the current situation, the anticipated change. This is a framework that we use, called the 8 Steps of Design, and we both know that when you’re working with adults, it’s important to factor in their past experience, their knowledge and, in the case of behavioral science, also habits. So I’m just kind of broadly speaking, in your view, what might learning designers and trainers and facilitators – who are like tending to all these different areas about adults past experiences and knowledge and habits – what might they be able to glean or learn from behavioral science, just kind of generally?
CASSIEÂ
You know if you’re a learning scientist, you might be familiar with Herbert Simon, who is a really prominent person in that field. And when I was studying learning science in grad school, I learned he had this really great quote that always stuck with me about how learning results from what the students does and thinks, and only that. So the role of an instructor, of a teacher, we can influence what a student does to facilitate that learning. But it really helps us push away from this “sage on a stage” model, where you’re just saying these things and you’re just hoping that people absorb it, just magically understand what you’re saying. So, no, we can’t make a student learn. But we can set a student up for success and facilitate the right sort of environment. And I really love that, because it fits so much with what we think about as behavioral scientists, about how we can’t influence what’s in someone’s minds, but we can create a context around them that sets them up for success and creates the space for them to make their own choices, their own learning changes and get to that endpoint. There’s a lot of talk about making sure students are college ready. But as a behavioral scientist, I also want to make sure colleges are student ready, that context is set up for them to be able to learn. And I’m not trying to like absolve students of personal responsibility here, like it is still up to the individual to make these choices for themselves. But I often hear things from college admins like, “well, it’s not my fault that the students don’t do this. We told them about it.” Or it’s- one time someone said, “well, a student’s poor planning isn’t an emergency for me.” But we know in behavioral science that someone’s context – their past experience with similar topics, the behavior of people they see around them, what else is on their mind at the time, maybe they’ll have a full-time job and a family they’re taking care of – all of these things, that’s going to have a much bigger influence on their behavior than their character or grit or natural aptitude.
TYLERÂ
Yeah, it makes me think about what we talked about earlier around, like the discovery process and just interviewing and understanding, as best we can, the context of the learners or participants, before even the training or learning event or process happens. Because, as you said, like, we don’t know what’s happening in their life until we ask about their experience, and consider, really, what all the holistic part of being a human and what they’re bringing in. The other idea that came up for me was, I sometimes described it as, as you said, we can’t make anybody learn, that’s kind of on the learner to- you know, they’re going to take whatever they will take away from our events, but creating a learning event or a process where the probability increases that they will learn and they will take something away that will create the change that we’re looking for, or that they’re hoping for, or that the organization is wishing for. So I like that kind of humility applied to it, and deep listening in order to create these contexts and environments where, yeah, learning and change is more likely to happen. Because at the end of the day, it’s not, you know, learning designers and behavioral scientists, we can only contribute and control so much. So thanks for that. I want to bring us into just this whole idea about decision making and connected to change. If some of the change, as I understand it in your work, is that folks make better decisions as a result of an improved process or unearthing these hassles, so that a better process can be created. Decision-making is also part of the learning process itself. Right? And part of the journey. One of the axioms that we use that Global Learning Partners is “learning is in the doing and the deciding”. So it’s creating opportunities for learners or participants to use content, do something with it, and then maybe it’s learn a new skill, or try to make different decisions, as relate, you know, that that’s more aligned with what they’re hoping to achieve. So we talked a little bit about decision-making, but how do you see like the role of decision making in like the learning, the transfer, the impact of a- of an event or an intervention that ideas42 might work on with a client or in an organization?
CASSIEÂ
Yeah, you’re absolutely right that decision-making and really just active participation and active engagement is really closely linked with learning, and both impact the other. And we talk about this in behavioral science, we call it “the generation effect”, where you retain learning, you retain information better when you generate the insight yourself, versus just reading or hearing about it. But we also know that making good decisions can be really tough for people. And we talked a little bit earlier today about how it’s not necessarily fair to put all that work of good decision-making onto the students. And instead of asking them to make better decisions, we just try and think about how can we design a system that just helps them do the things that we know will help them in the first place? So we really try and remove the need for tough decisions, especially if they have big consequences. One thing, for example, we know is, it is really helpful for students to engage with advisors. It makes sense, human support advisors are in a much better position to directly help the student with what they’re struggling with. It’s really great that schools have robust advising systems. And you could say we want students to be really informed about why they should meet with an advisor and choose for themselves to meet with an advisor. And sure, you could say that a student who is actively choosing to meet with an advisor will probably be more engaged with that conversation, take more ownership over it. But also, why don’t we just automatically schedule an appointment? If we know advisors can be helpful, why do we need to ask students to get to that conclusion on their own? Maybe we show them one appointment, and then they realize and then they choose to follow-up and keep showing up. But asking them to get there on their own, it can disadvantaged students without the previous experience or the social support to know what that right answer is. It doesn’t seem fair to me to withhold what you know the right answer is, and make students get there all on their own in the name of learning, when we can just help them along a little bit. Sort of the classic “I do, we do, you do” set up, where getting to “you do” and having the students do it on their own in the end is excellent, because that’s where real learning happens. But you can only get there after demonstrating it and doing it together first.
TYLERÂ
Yeah, the fairness word is just, I’m reflecting on that for a minute. Yeah, it’s just not fair, especially for young adults, it sounds like who are kind of figuring out the world and the administration–
CASSIEÂ
Right? You’re kind of pointing to something that’s very important – I’m sure it comes up in your work, it certainly doesn’t ours, and we’ve mentioned already in this conversation – some themes about equity and fairness. You mentioned students coming from marginalized communities, or minority communities. How does race play a factor in the process? Because we know and understand that there are some systematic, institutional barriers that have been created, certainly in the academic space, but we see it all over. I’m just wondering how you think about that in your work and how it comes up when you’re unearthing and also suggesting and designing? Yeah! Young adult, first generation students, minority students. People who are the first people in their family and community to go to college, how are they supposed to know that it is normal and okay to take advantage of these advising and tutoring services? For any of us, you’re struggling on a test, if you go to tutoring, you might feel like you’re a failure, you’re not actually college material at all. It’s embarrassing to have to ask for help. We’re taught all along, that’s for remedial education. You should be smarter than that. And that’s silly. Everyone needs help in different ways. All of us are struggling with new things that we haven’t been taught before. And we should just make that easy and accessible and available to everyone. I mean, higher education in America was designed for a certain type of student. And that student is just nothing like the students that it needs to be serving right now. The- if you’ve ever heard the term “a traditional student”, you’re thinking about someone right out of high school, who’s going into a four-year degree program, who probably has support from their parents, who are footing the tuition bill, they’re living on campus, they have no other responsibilities, and frankly, is a white upper middle class, privileged students. And this really doesn’t have any resemblance to the adults who are going while working full-time, the people- the mothers who go while caring for children. And people coming from communities, both first generation, immigrant communities, or Black and Hispanic communities that might not have been as well served by college institutions in the past. And colleges need to address that gap, where what- the student they’re designed for is not the student they’re addressing now. So you’re absolutely right that when we’re thinking about how race plays into this, colleges are not- colleges are designed for white privileged students. And that’s ridiculous, that’s serving a tiny portion of our communities and our populations. We’re leaving people out. And from a behavioral science perspective, so at ideas42, the way we approach this is really looking at what a student’s context is. And it’s easy to think about the college systems, the informational systems, how things are being communicated, how the decision is presented in the moment as a student’s context. But we need to zoom back out and acknowledge that a student’s experience up to that point, maybe they didn’t have a great experience in the K-12 system. Maybe that was in large part because of their race and how the K-12 system treated Black students. That’s a huge part of a student’s context, and it’s on us to acknowledge how that can influence someone’s decisions and actions for years to come. And how, what we can do to support that in a more thoughtful way.
TYLERÂ
I want to move us to our closing now as we’re coming up on our time, but this has been great, Cassie. Thank you for sharing all that you have. I’m wondering if there’s one practical tip or final piece of wisdom that you’d like to share with our listeners.
CASSIEÂ
Y’know, the one thing I’d say is always, this seems obvious, but just start at the beginning. Think about what- where you’re trying to get to, where you are now. Ask yourself why it’s not happening, and then figure out what you should do about it to address those issues. Learning designers might be really familiar with this concept with curriculum design – “backwards design” – where you don’t start with what you want to do in the classroom with your students. You don’t start with the instructional activity. That comes all the way at the end. First, you start with your goals. What do you want your students to do or learn or feel, that they’re not doing now? How will you know if you’ll achieve that? And then finally, what instructional activity do you need to design to get from here to there? And so we think about the same approach in behavioral science. Don’t start with the solution. Start at the beginning. Ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish. And let that be your guiding post throughout the whole thing.
TYLERÂ
Well said, Cassie, and thank you so much for being here with us. And we really appreciate your insights. It was great talking to you. Thank you for the work that you do. It’s like it’s really making a difference.
CASSIEÂ
Thank you, Tyler. It was a delight to join.
MEG
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for tuning into another episode of Shift the Power: A Learning-Centered Podcast. This podcast is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton with music by Una Walkenhorst. To find out more about Global Learning Partners, whether it be our course offerings, consulting services, free resources or blogs, go to www.globallearningpartners.com. We invite you to sign up for our mailing list, subscribe to our podcast and find us on social media to continue the dialogue. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast player. [OUTRO MUSIC FADES]