Scaling up behavioral science interventions in online education

Significance Low persistence in educational programs is a major obstacle to social mobility. Scientists have proposed many scalable interventions to support students learning online. In one of the largest international field experiments in education, we iteratively tested established behavioral science interventions and found small benefits depending on individual and contextual characteristics. Forecasting intervention efficacy using state-of-the-art methods yields limited improvements. Online education provides unprecedented access to learning opportunities, as evidenced by its role during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, but adequately supporting diverse students will require more than a light-touch intervention. Our findings encourage funding agencies and researchers conducting large-scale field trials to consider dynamic investigations to uncover and design for contextual heterogeneity to complement static investigations of overall effects.