Adaptive Assistance Systems for Academic Procrastination

We investigate how habitual social media use disrupts students’ intended study periods. We develop and evaluate personalized digital interventions that detect critical situations and support students when they need help regulating their behavior.

Overview

University students organize much of their learning independently. At the same time, social media offers an immediately rewarding alternative that can turn a brief distraction into habitual procrastination.

Existing tools often rely on generic blockers or reminders. They treat students alike, focus on visible behavior rather than its underlying drivers, and depend heavily on retrospective self-reports. As a result, they rarely account for why procrastination occurs, whom it affects, or what happens in the specific moment.

We address this gap by studying procrastination at the episode level and tailoring support to individual triggers, mechanisms, and self-regulation resources.

Research Objective & Questions

We aim to understand social media-driven academic procrastination and develop context-sensitive digital micro-interventions that respond to individual needs. We investigate:

Which personal and situational factors trigger social media use during intended study periods?
How can we measure procrastination as it occurs rather than only in retrospect?
How can digital interventions respond to different triggers and self-regulation needs?
How feasible, acceptable, and effective are these interventions in real study contexts?

Research Approach

The project follows an echeloned Design Science Research (eDSR) methodology, organizing the work into self-contained, iteratively validated phases that link problem understanding and artifact design. The methodological approach includes for instance:

Synthesis of procrastination drivers, usage patterns, and existing digital interventions.
Interviews reconstructing recent procrastination episodes to capture triggers, responses, and consequences.
Collaborative design and formative testing of a prototype intervention with student participants.
A randomized field experiment evaluating feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness in realistic study contexts.

Scientific contribution

We develop a more precise understanding of how personal predispositions, situational triggers, and habitual social media use interact. We also contribute design knowledge on measuring procrastination in context and developing adaptive digital interventions.

Practical impact

We develop support that responds to individual situations instead of applying the same restriction to every student. The resulting design principles can also inform personalized interventions in areas such as workplace stress or loneliness.

The project aims to deliver:

a context-sensitive measurement approach;
a personalized digital micro-intervention based on a Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention architecture;
transferable design knowledge for related digital support systems.