Ji Yong Cho
René F. Kizilcec
ABSTRACT
Educators and researchers in online education have grappled with not only how to increase course completion but also how to make a broader impact that goes beyond online courses, such as course participants' real-world applications of the learned knowledge and skills. Research in social psychology and behavioral science suggests that social norms interventions, which convey norms shared in the community that people belong in to promote desirable behaviors, can offer a low-cost and scalable approach to encourage actions beyond the courses (ABCs). We tested three social norm interventions that presented a weekly normative message (descriptive, dynamic, or injunctive norm) with aggregate information about course participants' ABCs in the prior week. Randomized experiments in three online courses found effects on ABCs to be weak and moderated by norm message type and the complexity of the target behavior. Although the interventions did not improve course completion, the dynamic norm message was more effective at promoting ABCs for complex behaviors, such as developing environmental education activities.
- Icek Ajzen. 1991. The theory of planned behavior. Organizational behavior and human decision processes 50, 2 (1991), 179--211.Google Scholar
- Ashton Anderson, Daniel Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Jure Leskovec. 2014. Engaging with massive online courses. In Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on World wide web. 687--698.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lorraine M Angelino, Frankie Keels Williams, and Deborah Natvig. 2007. Strategies to engage online students and reduce attrition rates. Journal of Educators Online 4, 2 (2007), n2.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Joshua D Angrist and Alan B Krueger. 1999. Empirical strategies in labor economics. In Handbook of labor economics. Vol. 3. Elsevier, 1277--1366.Google Scholar
- Michael Baiocchi and René Kizilcec. 2018. Criteria-Based Randomization: Explicit and Exact Control in Multi-Arm Trials. Available at SSRN 3339748 (2018).Google Scholar
- Alan D Berkowitz. 2005. An overview of the social norms approach. Changing the culture of college drinking: A socially situated health communication campaign 1 (2005), 193--214.Google Scholar
- Hart Blanton, Anne E Stuart, and Regina JJM Van den Eijnden. 2001. An introduction to deviance-regulation theory: The effect of behavioral norms on message framing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27, 7 (2001), 848--858.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Mary J Bresnahan and Jie Zhuang. 2016. Effects of normative antismoking messages in China-a brief report. Health communication 31, 3 (2016), 374--378.Google Scholar
- David Card. 1999. The causal effect of education on earnings. Handbook of labor economics 3 (1999), 1801--1863.Google Scholar
- Damon Centola and Tayler Lord. 2018. The truth about behavioral change. MIT Sloan Management Review.Google Scholar
- Guanliang Chen, Dan Davis, Claudia Hauff, and Geert-Jan Houben. 2016. Learning transfer: Does it take place in MOOCs? An investigation into the uptake of functional programming in practice. In Proceedings of the Third (2016) ACM Conference on Learning@ Scale. 409--418.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ji Yong Cho, Yue Li, Marianne E Krasny, Alex Russ, and René F Kizilcec. in press. Online Learning and Social Norms: Evidence from a Cross-Cultural Field Experiment in a Course for a Cause. Computer-Based Learning in Context (in press).Google Scholar
- Robert B Cialdini, Linda J Demaine, Brad J Sagarin, Daniel W Barrett, Kelton Rhoads, and Patricia L Winter. 2006. Managing social norms for persuasive impact. Social influence 1, 1 (2006), 3--15.Google Scholar
- Robert B Cialdini, Carl A Kallgren, and Raymond R Reno. 1991. A focus theory of normative conduct: A theoretical refinement and reevaluation of the role of norms in human behavior. In Advances in experimental social psychology. Vol. 24. Elsevier, 201--234.Google Scholar
- Robert B Cialdini, Raymond R Reno, and Carl A Kallgren. 1990. A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of personality and social psychology 58, 6 (1990), 1015.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Robert B Cialdini and Melanie R Trost. 1998. Social influence: Social norms, conformity and compliance. (1998).Google Scholar
- Derrick Coetzee, Armando Fox, Marti A Hearst, and Björn Hartmann. 2014. Should your MOOC forum use a reputation system?. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing. 1176--1187.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Joseph Crawford, Kerryn Butler-Henderson, Jürgen Rudolph, Bashar Malkawi, Matt Glowatz, Rob Burton, Paulo Magni, and Sophia Lam. 2020. COVID-19: 20 countries' higher education intra-period digital pedagogy responses. Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching 3, 1 (2020), 1--20.Google Scholar
- Dan Davis, Ioana Jivet, René F Kizilcec, Guanliang Chen, Claudia Hauff, and Geert-Jan Houben. 2017. Follow the successful crowd: raising MOOC completion rates through social comparison at scale. In Proceedings of the seventh international learning analytics & knowledge conference. 454--463.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Katherine Farrow, Gilles Grolleau, and Lisette Ibanez. 2017. Social norms and pro-environmental behavior: A review of the evidence. Ecological Economics 140 (2017), 1--13.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Susanne Gaube, Dimitrios Tsivrikos, Daniel Dollinger, and Eva Lermer. 2018. How a smiley protects health: A pilot intervention to improve hand hygiene in hospitals by activating injunctive norms through emoticons. PloS one 13, 5 (2018), e0197465.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Alan S Gerber and Todd Rogers. 2009. Descriptive social norms and motivation to vote: Everybody's voting and so should you. The Journal of Politics 71, 1 (2009), 178--191.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Noah J Goldstein, Robert B Cialdini, and Vladas Griskevicius. 2008. A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of consumer Research 35, 3 (2008), 472--482.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Monica Green and Margaret Somerville. 2015. Sustainability education: Researching practice in primary schools. Environmental Education Research 21, 6 (2015), 832--845.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Suzanne Higgs, Jinyu Liu, EIM Collins, and JM Thomas. 2019. Using social norms to encourage healthier eating. Nutrition Bulletin 44, 1 (2019), 43--52.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Matthew J Hornsey. 2008. Social identity theory and self-categorization theory: A historical review. Social and personality psychology compass 2, 1 (2008), 204--222.Google Scholar
- René F. Kizilcec and Geoffrey L. Cohen. 2017. Eight-minute self-regulation intervention raises educational attainment at scale in individualist but not collectivist cultures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114, 17 (2017), 4348--4353. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1611898114Google ScholarCross Ref
- René F Kizilcec and Sherif Halawa. 2015. Attrition and achievement gaps in online learning. In Proceedings of the Second (2015) ACM Conference on Learning@ Scale. 57--66.Google ScholarDigital Library
- René F. Kizilcec, Justin Reich, Michael Yeomans, Christoph Dann, Emma Brunskill, Glenn Lopez, Selen Turkay, Joseph Jay Williams, and Dustin Tingley. 2020. Scaling up behavioral science interventions in online education. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, 26 (2020), 201921417. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1921417117Google ScholarCross Ref
- René F Kizilcec, Andrew J Saltarelli, Justin Reich, and Geoffrey L Cohen. 2017. Closing global achievement gaps in MOOCs. Science 355, 6322 (2017), 251--252.Google Scholar
- René F Kizilcec, Emily Schneider, Geoffrey L Cohen, and Daniel A McFarland. 2014. Encouraging forum participation in online courses with collectivist, individualist and neutral motivational framings. EMOOCS 2014, Proceedings of the European MOOC stakeholder summit (2014), 80--87.Google Scholar
- Marianne E Krasny, Zahra Golshani, Brittney López Hampton, Juan Felipe Restrepo Mesa Coleman, Michael Schrenk, Masango Roderick Warakula, Gail Woon, and Yueyang Yu. 2019. MOOC Contributions to a "Better Place for All". MOOCs and Open Education in the Global South: Challenges, Successes, and Opportunities (2019).Google Scholar
- Irma Triasih Kurniawan, Ben Seymour, Deborah Talmi, Wako Yoshida, Nick Chater, and Raymond J Dolan. 2010. Choosing to make an effort: the role of striatum in signaling physical effort of a chosen action. Journal of neurophysiology 104, 1 (2010), 313--321.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Maria Knight Lapinski and Rajiv N Rimal. 2005. An explication of social norms. Communication theory 15, 2 (2005), 127--147.Google Scholar
- Youngju Lee and Jaeho Choi. 2011. A review of online course dropout research: Implications for practice and future research. Educational Technology Research and Development 59, 5 (2011), 593--618.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Yue Li and Marianne E Krasny. 2019. Practice change in environmental education: lessons from professional development. Environmental Education Research 25, 7 (2019), 1119--1136.Google ScholarCross Ref
- David D. Loschelder, Henrik Siepelmeyer, Daniel Fischer, and Julian A. Rubel. 2019. Dynamic norms drive sustainable consumption: Norm-based nudging helps café customers to avoid disposable to-go-cups. Journal of Economic Psychology 75, June 2018 (2019), 102146.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Chad R Mortensen, Rebecca Neel, Robert B Cialdini, Christine M Jaeger, Ryan P Jacobson, and Megan M Ringel. 2019. Trending norms: A lever for encouraging behaviors performed by the minority. Social Psychological and Personality Science 10, 2 (2019), 201--210.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Alyssa Napier, Elizabeth Huttner-Loan, and Justin Reich. 2018. From online learning to offline action: using MOOCs for job-embedded teacher professional development. In Proceedings of the Fifth Annual ACM Conference on Learning at Scale. 1--4.Google ScholarDigital Library
- H Perkins. 2003. The social norms approach to preventing school and college age substance abuse: A handbook for educators, counselors, and clinicians. Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
- Allecia E Reid, Robert B Cialdini, and Leona S Aiken. 2010. Social norms and health behavior. In Handbook of behavioral medicine. Springer, 263--274.Google Scholar
- Todd Rogers and Avi Feller. 2016. Discouraged by peer excellence: Exposure to exemplary peer performance causes quitting. Psychological science 27, 3 (2016), 365--374.Google ScholarCross Ref
- P Wesley Schultz, Jessica M Nolan, Robert B Cialdini, Noah J Goldstein, and Vladas Griskevicius. 2007. The constructive, destructive, and reconstructive power of social norms. Psychological science 18, 5 (2007), 429--434.Google Scholar
- Joanne R Smith, Winnifred R Louis, Deborah J Terry, Katharine H Greenaway, Miranda R Clarke, and Xiaoliang Cheng. 2012. Congruent or conflicted? The impact of injunctive and descriptive norms on environmental intentions. Journal of Environmental Psychology 32, 4 (2012), 353--361.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Gregg Sparkman and Gregory M Walton. 2017. Dynamic norms promote sustainable behavior, even if it is counternormative. Psychological science 28, 11 (2017), 1663--1674.Google Scholar
- Corrine I Voils, YunKyung Chang, Jamie Crandell, Jennifer Leeman, Margarete Sandelowski, and Matthew L Maciejewski. 2012. Informing the dosing of interventions in randomized trials. Contemporary clinical trials 33, 6 (2012), 1225--1230.Google Scholar
- Corrine I Voils, Heather A King, Matthew L Maciejewski, Kelli D Allen, William S Yancy Jr, and Jonathan A Shaffer. 2014. Approaches for informing optimal dose of behavioral interventions. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 48, 3 (2014), 392--401.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Yuan Wang, Luc Paquette, and Ryan Baker. 2014. A longitudinal study on learner career advancement in MOOCs. Journal of Learning Analytics 1, 3 (2014), 203--206.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Michael Yeomans and Justin Reich. 2017. Planning prompts increase and forecast course completion in massive open online courses. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series (2017), 464--473. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3027385.3027416Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Using Social Norms to Promote Actions Beyond the Course
Recommendations
A Role for Network Science in Social Norms Intervention
Social norms theory has provided a foundation for public health interventions on critical issues such as alcohol and substance use, sexual violence, and risky sexual behavior. We assert that modern social norms interventions can be better informed with ...
Social Norms in Online Communities: Formation, Evolution and Relation to Cyber-Aggression
CHI EA '18: Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsAggression manifests in many forms online (e.g. cyberbullying, flaming, doxxing, hate speech), yet studies of online aggression typically overlook variability between forms, motivations and communities. Through a series of four studies, my doctoral ...
When Social Norms Fail
GROUP '20: Companion Proceedings of the 2020 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group WorkWithin online communities, social norms that both set expectations for and regulate behavior can be critical to the overall welfare of the community--particularly in the context of the privacy and safety of its members. For communities where the cost of ...
Comments