The Impacts of Persuasive Messages on Students' Motivation and Learning Management Systems Use

Abstract

Persuasive messaging is used to change individuals' behaviours in a specific way, which are effective mechanisms in decision making and are mainly created based on persuasion strategies. Persuasive messaging has been applied in numerous contexts such as e-health, fund-raising. In this study, the effects of Cialdini's six persuasion principles (authority, scarcity, commitment, liking, consensus, reciprocation) in education context were studied via persuasive messaging for the first time in the literature. An experimental study was conducted with 147 students in an introductory IT course. To collect data, initially students filled motivated strategies for learning questionnaire (to measure motivation), Big Five Inventory (to measure personality) and susceptibilities to persuasion strategies scale (to measure persuadability). Treatment and control groups were created according to personality scores, motivation scores, persuadability scores obtained from the pre-survey, class type (online class or blended class) and departments of the students to form homogenous groups. One treatment and one control group were created for each class type making a total of 4 groups. During 12-week trimester, the treatment groups were sent messages including persuasive cues while the control groups were sent messages without persuasive cues or no messages. The messages included midterm reminders, assignment reminders, online quizzes, online discussions and related shares. At the end of the experiment, the students' Learning Management System (LMS) use and motivation (all of which refers to general attendance to the course) differences in control and treatment groups were compared. Additionally, students' opinions about the messages were explored. The results showed that there is no significant difference between the two student groups' LMS uses and motivations. However, the students' opinions about the messages in the treatment groups were more positive than the students in the control groups which show that persuasive messages are more effective. This study suggests that adoption of persuasive cues in messages should be considered if the instructors want to take their students attention to their announcements or course related messages especially in online learning environments.