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Raising the Stakes for Online Learning: Monetary Incentives Increase Performance in a Computer-Based Learning Task Under Certain Conditions
To what extent can external incentives influence students’ effort and learning in online course contexts? While cognitive science research has found that monetary incentives can increase goal-directed cognitive effort in certain laboratory tasks, attempts to use monetary incentives to increase stude...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9119014/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35602677 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.780301 |
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author | Schwab, Jessica F. Somerville, Leah H. |
author_facet | Schwab, Jessica F. Somerville, Leah H. |
author_sort | Schwab, Jessica F. |
collection | PubMed |
description | To what extent can external incentives influence students’ effort and learning in online course contexts? While cognitive science research has found that monetary incentives can increase goal-directed cognitive effort in certain laboratory tasks, attempts to use monetary incentives to increase students’ academic performance in naturalistic settings has shown mixed results. In two experiments, we tested the influence of a monetary incentive (compared to no external incentive) on immediate and delayed tests of computer-based educational performance (i.e., learning from educational videos). In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to (1) receive monetary incentives for correct quiz responses, or (2) receive no additional incentive for correct responses other than finding out their score, and we found no significant difference in total score across groups (on either immediate or delayed tests of learning). In Experiment 2, we used a within-subjects design to test whether participants performed better when they were provided monetary incentives for correct responses on quiz questions (compared to no external incentive). Here, participants performed significantly better on incentivized quiz questions (on both immediate and delayed tests of learning). Thus, monetary incentives may increase performance in online learning tasks when participants can anchor the “stakes” of an incentive compared to no external incentive. These findings highlight potential benefits of external incentives for promoting effort and learning in online contexts, although further research is needed to determine the most useful educationally-relevant extrinsic incentives, as well as potential negative effects of incentives on long-term intrinsic motivation. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9119014 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-91190142022-05-20 Raising the Stakes for Online Learning: Monetary Incentives Increase Performance in a Computer-Based Learning Task Under Certain Conditions Schwab, Jessica F. Somerville, Leah H. Front Psychol Psychology To what extent can external incentives influence students’ effort and learning in online course contexts? While cognitive science research has found that monetary incentives can increase goal-directed cognitive effort in certain laboratory tasks, attempts to use monetary incentives to increase students’ academic performance in naturalistic settings has shown mixed results. In two experiments, we tested the influence of a monetary incentive (compared to no external incentive) on immediate and delayed tests of computer-based educational performance (i.e., learning from educational videos). In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to (1) receive monetary incentives for correct quiz responses, or (2) receive no additional incentive for correct responses other than finding out their score, and we found no significant difference in total score across groups (on either immediate or delayed tests of learning). In Experiment 2, we used a within-subjects design to test whether participants performed better when they were provided monetary incentives for correct responses on quiz questions (compared to no external incentive). Here, participants performed significantly better on incentivized quiz questions (on both immediate and delayed tests of learning). Thus, monetary incentives may increase performance in online learning tasks when participants can anchor the “stakes” of an incentive compared to no external incentive. These findings highlight potential benefits of external incentives for promoting effort and learning in online contexts, although further research is needed to determine the most useful educationally-relevant extrinsic incentives, as well as potential negative effects of incentives on long-term intrinsic motivation. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC9119014/ /pubmed/35602677 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.780301 Text en Copyright © 2022 Schwab and Somerville. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Schwab, Jessica F. Somerville, Leah H. Raising the Stakes for Online Learning: Monetary Incentives Increase Performance in a Computer-Based Learning Task Under Certain Conditions |
title | Raising the Stakes for Online Learning: Monetary Incentives Increase Performance in a Computer-Based Learning Task Under Certain Conditions |
title_full | Raising the Stakes for Online Learning: Monetary Incentives Increase Performance in a Computer-Based Learning Task Under Certain Conditions |
title_fullStr | Raising the Stakes for Online Learning: Monetary Incentives Increase Performance in a Computer-Based Learning Task Under Certain Conditions |
title_full_unstemmed | Raising the Stakes for Online Learning: Monetary Incentives Increase Performance in a Computer-Based Learning Task Under Certain Conditions |
title_short | Raising the Stakes for Online Learning: Monetary Incentives Increase Performance in a Computer-Based Learning Task Under Certain Conditions |
title_sort | raising the stakes for online learning: monetary incentives increase performance in a computer-based learning task under certain conditions |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9119014/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35602677 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.780301 |
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