Reading 4 - The Application of Persuasive Technology to Educational Settings

We see many forms of persuasion around us every day, particularly for the marketing of different products, influencing users to use a fitness app or incentivizing them to be fair online. For example, a star rating system seen on many websites is one example of persuasive technologies which forces buyer and seller to be fair in their engagements by assigning them a public star rating based on their transactions. In this paper, the author has explored the application and usefulness of persuasion in educational settings, particularly for knowledge acquisition and taken into account an application (HANDS) designed for children on Autism Spectrum to understand how these techniques can be used in instructional settings for behavior change. In the end, the author gives four design principles that should be considered for persuasive technologies while designing systems for educational settings.

Persuasion

According to Wikipedia, persuasive technology is defined as technology that is designed to change attitudes or behaviors of the users through persuasion and social influence but not through coercion.
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) given by Petty and Caioppo in 1986 makes a distinction between persuasion resulting from

1. The elaboration of information and argument presented in the message.
2. The cues present in the context of the message such as source being viewed as physically attractive, without deep cognitive evaluation of the message.

Persuasive Technology in Instructional Design

Fogg's Design Principles
Fogg (2003) highlights several specific design principles for bringing about behavior change that are particularly well suited for incorporation into instructional design systems:

1. Reduction - Reducing complex procedures or instructions into simpler, easily understandable steps to reduce cognitive load.
2. Tunneling - Scaffolding or guiding the student towards action that brings them closer to the target behavior. For example, by asking relevant simpler questions.
3. Tailoring - Customizing the content to the understanding level of the student.
4. Personalization - Allowing the student to control certain aspects of the system to their liking.
5. Self-Monitoring - Giving some form of analytics or reports to enable students to track their own performance.
6. Credibility - Can be provided in two forms; trustworthiness and expertise. Trustworthiness indicates perceived goodness or morality of source and Expertise indicates the perceived knowledge and skill of the source. The system should then be credible for the student.
7. Rewards - Providing virtual rewards or praise to reinforce the behavior when a certain goal is achieved.

Helping Autism Diagnosed young people Navigate and Develop Socially - Project HANDS
This application provides a toolkit for teachers and parents that can be used to develop screen flows suit the individual needs of students. For example, the paper presents an example of a child on ASD who is allergic to certain foods but wants to go for shopping himself. Through HANDS, a teacher designs an intervention sequence for the child with the following functions:

1. A list of products to which he is allergic and of food which is likely to contain the product
2. A list of alternatives
3. A prompt question—does it contain nuts?
4. A prompt question—Is it on the list?
5. A prompt question—Do you need an alternative product?

With this intervention sequence, the child is now able to shop for himself without getting confused about what he can and cannot eat without the help of his mother.

Design Principles for Use of Persuasive Technology in Instructional Design
After qualitative assessment of the HANDS application through interviews, questionnaires, and observations with teachers and children, authors have highlighted four design principles that should be taken into account when designing for educational settings:

1. Tasks that children have high motivation to engage with and that can be clearly delineated are most likely to be amenable to persuasive interventions.
2. Using technology in an educational context for persuasive aims offers the potential to leverage the perceived credibility of the teacher.
3. Persuasive interventions are most effective when they are interwoven with the face to face involvement of the teacher.
4. Kairos: Interventions provided at the right time and place will be more persuasive and more likely to bring about behavior change.

Key Takeaway:

From what I understand after reading the paper, persuasion can certainly be used for behavior change. However, interaction with a human/teacher is important for building credibility and tech alone should not be heavily relied upon.