Abstract
Boosting engagement with educational software has been promoted as a means of improving student performance. We examine two promising and relatively understudied manipulations from the realm of gambling: the near-win effect and anticipation. The near-win effect occurs when an individual comes close to achieving a goal, while anticipation refers to the build-up of suspense as an outcome is revealed (e.g., losing early vs. late). Gambling psychologists have long studied how near-wins affect engagement in pure-chance games but it is difficult to do the same in an educational context where outcomes are based on skill. We manipulate the display of outcomes such that artificial near-wins are introduced largely independent of a student’s performance. In a study involving thousands of students using an online math tutor, we examine how this manipulation affects a behavioral measure of engagement. We find a near-win effect on engagement when the ‘win’ indicates to the student that they may continue to the next lesson. Nonetheless, when we experimentally induce near wins in a randomized controlled trial, we do not obtain a reliable effect of the near win. We conclude by describing manipulations that might increase the effect of near wins on engagement.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Krista Marks, Bill Troxel, and Adam Holt from Woot Math for their help and cooperation in conducting this study. The research was supported by NSF Grants SES-1461535 and DRL-1631428.
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Khajah, M.M., Mozer, M.C., Kelly, S., Milne, B. (2018). Boosting Engagement with Educational Software Using Near Wins. In: Penstein Rosé, C., et al. Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10948. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93846-2_31
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93846-2_31
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