“It’s the easiest way for a teacher to help their students improve their grades.”
— Dr. Austin Boyle, PhD

Shortly before the start of the Fall 2024 semester, Dr. Austin Boyle, an Associate Teaching Professor at Penn State, reached out to the MyTextMate team to discuss piloting MyTextMate in two of his economics courses.

The Problem: Bad Grades from Missing Assignments

After a colleague discovered that students who simply showed up to his class earned higher grades than those who didn’t, Dr. Boyle wanted to see if this pattern applied to his own students. He looked at his Spring 2024 gradebook and found that grades weren’t low because students did poorly; they were low because students weren’t turning in assignments.

After realizing that just submitting assignments drastically improved his students’ chances of passing, Dr. Boyle wanted to figure out how to get his students to turn in their work. That's when he looked toward MyTextMate for a solution.

Analyzing MyTextMate's Impact

At the beginning of the semester, Dr. Boyle encouraged all of the students from both of his classes to sign up for MyTextMate. He planned to compare the missed assignments, final grades, and course completion rates between the students who used MyTextMates and those who didn't.

Ultimately, 185 of his 290 students (63.8%) signed up for MyTextMate, allowing Dr. Boyle to conduct a meaningful analysis of MyTextMate's impact. He found that the MyTextMate users achieved the following performance improvements over the students who never signed up:

52.9% fewer missed assignments
8.5% higher final grades
11% higher course completion rates

Dr. Boyle was thrilled to report these findings back to the MyTextMate team; he had never seen a tool have this kind of impact in his classroom.

Interestingly, the data showed that MyTextMate users had slightly higher test scores, but their higher final grades primarily came from turning in more assignments, not doing better on tests. This supports Dr. Boyle's prior observation of missed assignments being the primary cause of failing grades.

Dr. Boyle is actively continuing this research into the Spring 2025 semester and plans to publish the full study. If you want to dive deeper into the details of his findings, please email charlie@mytextmate.com or book 15 minutes to talk, and let us know if you want to hear directly from Dr. Boyle.

What This Means

Many students aren’t failing because they don’t understand the material. They fail because they don’t turn things in.

If turning in work results in higher grades, then the real challenge is helping students keep up with deadlines. Daily, automated, Canvas-integrated text reminders like MyTextMate solve this problem without adding work for professors.

If you want to achieve similar results with your own students, please reach out. We would love to help!