Motivating effort in online learning: a field experiment

Motivating students to complete work without repeated interactions is a primary challenge in the transition to less in person time. I run an experiment comparing two interventions, (1) an email nudge telling students similar problems from their homework will be on the exam and (2) grading homework, on attempting homework and exam performance. Both increase attempts: nudging by 3 percentage points and grading by 72 percentage points. Attempting homework problems increases the probability of answering similar problems on exams correctly by 3.4 percentage points. Higher GPA students respond more to effort interventions, but equal effort yields equal gains on exams.