“NUDGE“ - Design, Nudge, Support: Co-Creating Student Success in Natural Sciences
NUDGE started in 2026 as a collaboration between the science education groups at the geoscience, physics, biology and chemistry departments at the University of Oslo.
The Challenge
The transition from school to higher education is challenging for many students in the natural sciences. First-year students report struggling with understanding what is expected of them, study skills (including effective use of AI), seeing the relevance of their studies, self-regulation (e.g. time management, coming to lectures, preparing for exercises), teamwork, sense of belonging, and motivation. Students cope with these challenges in various ways and to various degrees. Some drop out, especially in the 1st year, and others fail to reach their academic goals.
Project goals and approaches
Many studies have examined how to support students. This project’s unique contribution is to combine two perspectives and a methodological approach to explore student challenges, understand how students and staff address them, and turn these insights into concrete strategies that support academic success. The study will take place in the physics, biology, geoscience and chemistry departments (natural sciences programs) at the University of Oslo, Norway.
• Student–staff partnership: co-creating interventions and solutions with students to address their challenges and support them in reaching their goals.
• Nudging / choice architecture: supporting students to make decisions and build habits that help them achieve their goals.
• Educational Design Research (EDR/DBR): systematically combining design and development of education with research and evaluation in an iterative process.
Exploratory study: Hopes & Fears
In the Hopes & Fears study, first-year geoscience students share what motivates, engages, or causes them concern in their studies, and describe what happens in the encounter with higher education, their fellow students, and their teachers.
Schmid et al. (accepted 2026) Hopes and fears: 1st year geoscience students encounter with academia. Journal of Geography in Higher Education.
Contact Sarah Schmid for more information.
Sarah Schmid, Ph.D. student.
Workshop: The Nudging toolbelt
At the Geolearning Forum in October 2026 we will gather staff and students in Trondheim to explore how nudges are used and percieved in higher education geosciences in Norway.
For more info about the workshop, see here.
Participants
Collaborators
Financing
This project is financed by the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Oslo.