Characteristics of a Persuasive Educational System: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The need to compete for users’ attention and provide them with the best user experience has increased the use of persuasion strategies in modern systems. Currently, Persuasive Systems (PSs) promote healthy behavior for well-being, energy consumption, and learning. Although the educational domain has limited investigation compared to other areas, PSs in education have been shown to be effective in motivating students. This paper summarizes the existing evidence on Persuasive Educational Systems (PESs), emphasizing research on the current design methods, evaluation methods, and characteristics. We follow Kitchenham’s method to perform a systematic literature review about PESs published between 2014 and 2020, with 19 relevant studies selected. We highlight some results from the analysis of selected papers such as persuasion strategies, use of a personalized persuasion technique, study of students’ susceptibility to strategies, integration of gamification mechanisms, and proposed tools to design PES. Moreover, we discuss interesting facts such as the common practice of using more than one tool to design PES, aspects of interaction, persuasion, learning, and the challenges in evaluating persuasive impact. Finally, as the main contribution of the paper we identify the seven necessary characteristics to build a persuasive educational system.

A systematic review on the efficacy of virtual reality and gamification interventions for managing anxiety and depression

“…Persuasive technology, on the other hand, focuses on designing interactive technologies to influence and persuade individuals' attitudes, behaviors, or beliefs (5). Through persuasive techniques such as feedback, rewards, social influence, and personalization, persuasive technologies aim to motivate users to adopt desired behaviors or make informed decisions (6). By leveraging principles from psychology, social sciences, and human-computer interaction, persuasive technologies can effectively engage users and facilitate positive behavior change.…”

“…Persuasive technology is the art of influencing attitudes and behaviours without coercion or deceit (5). These persuasive features often tap into cognitive and emotional mechanisms, harnessing the power of feedback, social influence, and competition to promote positive change (6). The persuasive features inherent to gamified interventions leverage psychological principles to encourage individuals to adopt desired behaviours, sustain engagement, and achieve positive outcomes.…”

Co-designing a framework for a persuasive educational technology tool for motivating female students for enrolment into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics disciplines

“…Given these issues, context-specific PT frameworks are required. According to Murillo-Muñoz et al 29 As illustrated in Figure 1, the concept of PET is based on three components: persuasion, education and technology. 30 The idea is that by integrating various persuasive cues 31 into teaching instructions and integrating these persuasive teaching instructions into a technology for the females to use, their attitudes towards STEM fields will change, and this will, in turn, increase their enrolment in STEM disciplines.…”