The Psychology Underlying Pregnancy: Investigation of Social Comparison Processes and Their Projection in Natural Language

In addition to the physiological alterations that occur relatively predictably during pregnancy, psychological transformations also occur at the same time. The baby is developing, but so are a mother's fears and imaginations about her unborn child. Such imaginations about the unborn child and parenting methods are sure to evoke a range of...

Operationalizing behavior change theory as part of persuasive technology: A scoping review on social comparison

Theories from psychology or the social sciences are commonly used as a starting point when designing persuasive technologies that aim to evoke a specific behavior change. Ideally, using these theories would (1) help guide the design of the persuasive technology and (2) help evaluate and inform the theory. In this paper, we focused on the first...

The Real-Time Learning Tracker: Real-Time Learner Feedback for Encouraging Self-Regulation & Metacognition in MOOCS

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have the potential to make quality education affordable and available to the masses and reduce the gap between the most privileged and the most disadvantaged learners worldwide. However, this potential is overshadowed by low completion rates, often below 15%. Due to the high level of autonomy that is required...

Follow the successful crowd: Raising MOOC completion rates through social comparison at scale

Social comparison theory asserts that we establish our social and personal worth by comparing ourselves to others. In in-person learning environments, social comparison offers students critical feedback on how to behave and be successful. By contrast, online learning environments afford fewer social cues to facilitate social comparison. Can...

The Learning Tracker: A Learner Dashboard that Encourages Self-regulation in MOOC Learners

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have the potential to make quality education affordable and available to the masses and reduce the gap between the most privileged and the most disadvantaged learners worldwide. However, this potential is overshadowed by low completion rates, often below 15%. Due to the high level of autonomy that is required...