A randomised comparison in Kuwait examined whether different digital reminders improved assignment submission behaviour.
What researchers studied
A randomised comparison in Kuwait examined whether different digital reminders improved assignment submission behaviour.
The researchers allocated 138 higher-education students equally across three groups in an introductory educational-technology course.
One group received friendly researcher-written messages through Microsoft Teams, another received automated Moodle notifications, and a control group received no additional reminders.
Five assignments were monitored over ten weeks, with submission times extracted from Moodle activity logs.
This meant the main outcomes reflected recorded behaviour rather than student recollections.
What they found
The Teams reminder group achieved an average on-time submission rate of 94.22%.
The Moodle reminder group recorded 85.65%, while the control group recorded 75.22%.
Average submission delays were 5.18 hours, 15.45 hours and 30.89 hours in the same order.
Researchers reported statistically significant differences among the three conditions.
The estimated effect size for on-time submission was eta-squared 0.289.
These findings favour the complete Teams reminder approach tested, but do not establish which individual feature of the reminders produced the difference.
What it means
Approachable, timely reminders may be useful tools for reducing late coursework.
Universities could experiment with message wording, authorship and timing rather than relying solely on standard system alerts.
Digital learning platforms also provide objective logs for evaluating such changes.
The experiment is relevant to student-support teams seeking inexpensive behavioural interventions.
However, it should not be interpreted as evidence that Teams technology is inherently superior to Moodle.
Important limitation
The reminder conditions differed simultaneously in platform, wording, authorship and delivery format.
Because these elements were not isolated, the experiment cannot attribute its effect to any single component.
All students attended one course at one institution, and communication between classmates could have contaminated group assignments.
The authors also advised caution about the delay-related effect size because of its statistical distribution.
Source Information
Study: The impact of personalized deadline reminders via Microsoft Teams and Moodle calendar on assignment submission and completion rates
Authors: Ahmad Alfailakawi and Abdulaziz Alenizi
Journal / Source: Frontiers in Education
Published: 11 November 2026
