PhD defence R.J. (Robert) Weijers

Dissertation in short:

In this dissertation, I researched the usage of nudging as supportive strategy for teachers to promote autonomous learning behavior in students in vocational education and training. Nudging is a technique from behavioral economics to change behavior by changing the choice environment. Nudging is scarcely applied in educational contexts, despite it being a possible tool for teachers to intervene without reducing their students’ autonomy. The central research question is as follows: Can nudging as a teaching strategy improve autonomous learning behaviors in students?

First, nudges are a valuable addition to techniques to promote autonomous learning behavior. In offline lessons, the goal-nudge helped students to ask more questions during class and get higher grades: students were set a goal at the start of class. In online lessons, the prompt-nudge helped the students to ask more questions, but not get higher grades: the teacher placed the text “Question? Ask live or in chat!” on their virtual background. These small adjustments achieved relevant behavioral change and improved learning outcomes.

Second, nudging has an important condition: students have to both want to demonstrate the behavior, and be able to do so. Only then can a nudge support autonomous learning behavior.

Third, this project reaffirms the importance of the factors behavior, nudge, context and learner when designing nudges for educational practice. With these factors in mind, nudging can be a valuable addition to – but not replacement of – existing methods for teachers to help students demonstrate autonomous learning behaviors, so that students can more independently join society.