91制片厂 Academy鈥檚 Proactive AI Builds Student Momentum
Earlier this month, WGU Chief Academic Officer Courtney Hills McBeth announced a major milestone for WGU and its alumni 鈥� 500,000 credentials awarded since the university was founded in 1997. This achievement is a tribute to the hundreds of thousands of students who persisted in their education, even when it was difficult.
Students鈥� early tendencies to persist from term-to-term is a key indicator of whether they will continue to completion. Conversely, students who don鈥檛 engage with their studies for 30 days or longer tend to be one of the most difficult groups to reactivate.
91制片厂 Academy recently implemented a proactive, AI-powered guide designed to help students build and maintain momentum 鈥� not just when they ask for help, but when they鈥檙e most likely to get stuck.
We鈥檙e already seeing early signals that this approach matters. Since the tool rollout, students who have been inactive for 30 days or more are reengaging with their programs at double the rate of reactivation pre-rollout.
The Right Interventions at the Right Time
Whether they鈥檙e pursuing a short-term credential or a degree, students face varied but familiar barriers to education. Many Academy students are balancing coursework alongside jobs, caregiving, or financial pressure. Some are returning to education after years away. The majority of those enrolled in Academy鈥檚 courses have a history of academic setbacks.
Among Academy鈥檚 nearly 40,000 readiness students served this year, 78% have at least one failing grade on their prior high school or college transcripts; 39% have failed to pass more than half of their prior courses. Many are still trying to determine whether higher education is something they can realistically achieve. Online learning environments can be especially challenging for these students. They need support but sometimes feel isolated from those who can encourage them to continue.
Progress is rarely disrupted by one catastrophic event. More often, momentum is lost through accumulation 鈥� multiple small operational barriers that compound over time.聽聽
What鈥檚 more interesting, though, is where engagement actually happens. Engagement clusters around moments of friction: uncertainty about the next step, missed deadlines, loss of momentum, or difficulty balancing school with work and life.
We鈥檙e also learning that many of the highest-friction moments are operational, not academic. Roughly 65% of inbound interactions are administrative, technical or deadline-related. These are high-volume, repeatable needs that can often be resolved instantly through AI-supported guidance.聽聽
This knowledge creates a meaningful opportunity to improve responsiveness for students while allowing mentors and staff to focus more deeply on the moments when human support matters most.聽聽
Taking the Guesswork out of Next Steps聽
About 20% of student interactions reflect the realities of balancing school alongside work, caregiving, pacing, and competing life demands, which signals that many students need behavior-focused support as much as informational support. That distinction matters because many of the highest-leverage opportunities for AI in education are also the most routine:
- Clarifying the next step in a course or enrollment process
- Sending timely reminders for deadlines, tasks or inactivity
- Answering repeatable questions about policies and navigation聽
- Surfacing relevant resources based on where a student is stuck
- Tracking momentum and flagging early signs of disengagement
- Coordinating handoffs with mentors and support staff
Our technology can surface a clear next step when students pause. 鈥淪tart here. This lesson typically takes 15 minutes.鈥� If the student doesn鈥檛 return the next day, it checks in. 鈥淪till planning to work on this? I can help you pick up where you left off.鈥澛犅犅�
If they fall further behind, it connects them directly to a mentor, without requiring them to figure out how or when to ask. That last part matters.
For many students, asking for help is not simple. It can carry weight: uncertainty about belonging, prior educational experiences, fear of judgment or simply not knowing where to start.
Proactive support changes that dynamic. It lowers the barrier to reengagement and makes support easier to access in the moments where students are most likely to stall. It may even reduce some of the social stigma associated with asking for help.聽
So far, we鈥檝e seen over 24,000 interactions, focused primarily on our least engaged learners. As we add use cases, we expect the interactions and impacts to grow exponentially.
Human Touchpoints Matter
There are also important limits to what technology can and should do. Many parts of education remain deeply human:聽 聽
- Coaching through confusion or low confidence
- Navigating competing life priorities
- Building trust, encouragement and belonging
- Supporting students through setbacks聽
We must always revisit the balance between AI-interventions and human interactions. It helps clarify where technology can reduce friction and where people remain essential.聽
We know from experience that lasting progress is built from small, consistent wins. Over time, those moments compound into something much bigger: momentum toward a skill, a course, a credential, and ultimately a career. When support shows up at the right moment, the experience changes 鈥� and so do outcomes.
The future of student support cannot simply be about making services available. It has to make support more present, proactive, and easier to access 鈥� especially in the moments where busy students are most likely to disengage.
