BLAST REDUCES PROFESSOR WORKLOAD & INCREASES TUITION INCOME
Students who don’t drop out, decrease costs.
This is due to a reduced need for expensive tutoring and other remediation services. Beyond the practical benefits, Blast addresses one of the most enduring structural inequalities in higher education and puts an end to the negative effects of cheat sites.
Traditionally College courses rewarded for behavior A and hoped the reward would produce Behavior B – that was not directly rewarded. In this case Behavior A is test taking and behavior B is studying in a way that produces competence.
This model has always disadvantaged students from underserved communities who often come from households that don’t teach them to think strategically about studying from a young age.
THE FINAL BLOW
The final blow to this outdated reward model is cheat sites that pay people to post professor questions.
From a practical standpoint, the best way for a student to ensure a good grade on a test is to use a cheat site. However, these sites produce short-term pattern recognition memory without creating competence or durable memories. These outcomes cause students to fail future courses that require knowledge from previous courses.
Blast counteracts the negative effects of cheat sites by giving points for effective studying and writing those points to your learning management system gradebook. The research-based studying strategies in Blast go beyond task completion to include doing study activities on the right days and using study methods that create durable memories and critical thinking ability.
FAR FEWER FAILURES
Studying with Blast is less of a time burden on students
The fun fact is that due to the effectiveness of Blast, and the ability for students to study anywhere using the Blast Alexa voice interphase on their cell phone, studying with Blast is less of a time burden on students than any other form of studying.
The results of using Blast to provide fair rewards for effective studying is far fewer course failures and students who are able to succeed in challenging majors.