Motivated by the self-determination theory of psychology, we investigate how simple school practices can forge students' engagement with the academic aspect of school life. We carried out a large-scale preregistered randomized field experiment with a crossover design, involving all the students of the University of Szeged in Hungary. Our intervention consisted of an automated encouragement message that praised students' past achievements and signaled trust in their success. The treated students received encouragement messages before their exam via two channels: e-mail and SMS message. The control students did not receive any encouragement. Our primary analysis compared the treated and control students' end-of-semester exam grades, obtained from the university's registry. Our secondary analysis explored the difference between the treated and control students' self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety, obtained from an online survey before students' exams. We did not find an average treatment effect on students' exam grades. However, in the subsample of those who answered the endline survey, the treated students reported higher self-efficacy than the control students. The treatment affected students' motivation before their first exam-but not before their second-and did not affect students' test anxiety. Our results indicate that automated encouragement messages sent shortly before exams do not boost students' exam grades, but they do increase self-efficacy. These results contribute to understanding the self-efficacy mechanism through which future encouragement campaigns might exert their effect. We conclude that encouraging students and raising their self-efficacy might create a school climate that better engages students with the academic aspect of school life.

中文翻译：

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不只是言语！轻触式随机鼓励干预对学生考试成绩、自我效能感、动机和考试焦虑的影响。

在心理学的自我决定理论的推动下，我们调查了简单的学校实践如何能够促使学生参与学校生活的学术方面。我们使用交叉设计进行了大规模的预注册随机现场实验，涉及匈牙利塞格德大学的所有学生。我们的干预包括自动鼓励信息，赞扬学生过去的成就并表示对他们成功的信任。接受治疗的学生在考试前通过两种渠道收到鼓励信息：电子邮件和短信。对照组学生没有得到任何鼓励。我们的主要分析比较了从大学注册处获得的治疗学生和对照组学生的学期末考试成绩。我们的二次分析探讨了从学生考试前的在线调查中获得的治疗组和对照组学生的自我效能感、动机和考试焦虑之间的差异。我们没有发现对学生考试成绩的平均处理效果。然而，在回答最终调查的人的子样本中，接受治疗的学生报告的自我效能感高于对照组学生。治疗影响了学生在第一次考试前的积极性——但不会在第二次考试之前影响学生的考试焦虑。我们的结果表明，在考试前不久发送的自动鼓励信息不会提高学生的考试成绩，但确实会提高自我效能感。这些结果有助于理解自我效能机制，未来的鼓励活动可能通过该机制发挥其作用。我们得出的结论是，鼓励学生并提高他们的自我效能感可能会营造一种让学生更好地参与学校生活的学术方面的学校氛围。