Can Your Smartphone Predict Your GPA?

Many cognitive, behavioral, and environmental factors impact student learning during college. The SmartGPA app uses passive sensing data and self-reports from students' smartphones to understand individual behavioral differences between high and low performers during a single 10-week term.

The research team show that there are a number of important behavioral factors automatically inferred from smartphones that significantly correlate with term and cumulative GPA, including time series analysis of activity, conversational interaction, mobility, class attendance, studying, and partying.

The predicted GPA strongly correlates with the ground truth from students' transcripts (r = 0.81 and p < 0.001) and predicts GPA within ±0.179 of the reported grades. The results open the way for novel interventions to improve academic performance. [pdf]

A short video of the app can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqJTXo1uKJ0

The radio segment aired on WGBH during NPRs Morning Edition and All Things Considered.