# Awareness to Action: Student Knowledge of and Responses to an Early Alert System
## 4 Discussion
### Behavioral Responses to Receiving an ASR  
Despite the preponderance of initial negative reactions, for many students ASRs worked as intended by prompting action that could positively impact their academic performance. First and foremost, only 19.1% of students dropped or withdrew from the course pertaining to their ASR, suggesting that many students were motivated to persist in the course. Further, 63.6% of students changed their behavior in response to receiving an ASR, most often increasing their class attendance, adjusting their study habits, and increasing their course participation. These changes are aligned with good practices for academic performance [45; 46]. For example, a meta-analysis of college students' class attendance suggests that it is strongly and positively associated with GPA [47].  
ASRs were moderately successful in facilitating supportive connections for students, with ~1/3 of students contacting or being contacted by their instructor and ~1/4 contacting or being contacted by academic advising. These findings suggest that early alert systems are in fact a useful tool in higher education, as prior work suggests that student connection with instructors is an important contributor to student retention [26; 27]. Further, a unique goal of ASRs is to facilitate a \"triangle\" of connections between students, instructors, and staff to promote student success, and these responses provide evidence that these connections occur as a result of ASRs. They also align with prior work suggesting that early alert systems facilitate collaboration between instructors, staff, and students [10], and lead students to seek assistance from their instructor [43]. However, we also find room for growth in the frequency of these connections. Communication was more likely to be initiated by an instructor or academic advisor than by students. Indeed, faculty report that a major benefit of early alert systems is that these systems help them fulfill their duty of care to students by facilitating student awareness of their status in the course and, if necessary, how to improve [36]. These data also signal that students may feel that they do not have the knowledge, skills, or relationships to respond appropriately to an early alert, as part of a broader trend that students are hesitant to make use of institutional supports [48; 49; 50]. Regarding academic help-seeking, a review of existing literature identified several factors that contribute to a student's choice to seek support, including whether seeking help can lower a student's self-esteem by revealing academic deficiencies [51]. We discuss potential avenues to improve student rates of help-seeking after receiving an ASR in the next section.  
One of the key contributions to this work is that it provides a window into the step-by-step processing that occurs when a student receives an ASR. First, students experience initial emotions, which are often negative (e.g., disappointment, frustration). After reflection, students form impressions as to their current and prospective situation in the course, on average determining that they have the motivation and ability to improve. Finally, students develop an action plan to address their current academic circumstances, involving, for example, connecting with their instructor or academic advisor, increasing their course attendance, or changing their study habits. Assessing student emotions, impressions, or actions alone would have given an incomplete report as to the complex interplay of emotional processing and decision-making that students undergo after receiving an academic early alert. Each of these stages may also be targeted by revisions to the early alert system, as described in the next section.