How can you leverage behavioral economics in educational design?
The field of behavioral economics, originally developed to explore decision-making processes within economic contexts, has expanded over the years into fields, including educational design. In this field, behavioral economics provides answers on how to shape the design and delivery of educational materials so that learners can make better educational choices, overcome challenges, and achieve their goals. Let’s take a look at how behavioral economics can help boost your educational design based on six core ways to influence motivation, decision making and engagement among learners.
Six ways to apply behavioral economics to educational design
1. Selection architecture and minor amounts
An irreplaceable aspect of quality educational design is the choice architecture. This method of influences the way learners make decisions attempts to shape the context in which choices are presented and thus perceived. But it’s not about making learners choose what you want. The key is to let them decide what will benefit them the most.
Here, nudges play a powerful role. When guiding learners towards desired behaviors and behaviors, micronuclei are concrete and subtle interventions designed to influence learners’ behaviors while maintaining a certain degree of freedom of choice. For example, microbacteria may contain visual cues. Educational designers emphasize important information using icons or specific fonts. Or highlights social proofs with embedded statements that encourage suitability for positive behavior, such as “90% of students who successfully completed this lesson are 90% of students who pass the final assessment.”
Both the architecture of choice and micronucleus are extremely important when it comes to merging instructional design and behavioral economics, as they can help build effective learning experiences, influence real behavioral changes, and ultimately allow learners to make beneficial decisions for their own improvement.
2. Reward system
Individuals rarely assume intentional behavior without seeing certain rewards. Therefore, establishing a reward system during a learning journey is to seduce learners and ensure that they form long-term study habits. The rewards act as checkpoints, indicating that each has reached a milestone. But don’t forget that they also act as a powerful motivation.
One way to approach this is to provide fluctuating rewards. In this case, at unexpected intervals, learners become engrossed by reminding them that rewards are not guaranteed but possible. This unpredictability activates the brain’s innate reward system, releases dopamine, generates a sense of excitement and anticipation, and promotes repeated engagement with behaviors that have ultimately been rewarded.
Still, remember that individuals tend to act quickly and satisfy. It’s much easier to take action when you know that your problem will be rewarded soon. Use frequent feedback to enhance your efforts and promote further sustainability without overuse of other reward elements.
Finally, keep in mind that exogenous rewards should not be the main focus of learning. The essential motivation is much more valuable and sustainable in the long run. Therefore, make sure your rewards are meaningful and add value to your learner’s journey. Otherwise, the system proves to be ineffective immediately.
3. Pre-Committee
Research shows that advance donations play an active role in learners’ long-term motivation and achievement. Incorporating opportunities to incorporate opportunities establishing commitment-related activities proves to be extremely useful for successful combinations of educational design and behavioral economics. This strategy usually involves learners publicly declaring their learning goals and even setting potential time frames at the beginning of the learning process. Through the learning experience, learners track progress towards stated goals. When they reach the end of the course, they need to compare how they actually performed their first declaration.
By making commitments visible, education designers help learners to hold them accountable and remain conscious of the desired outcomes. After all, it’s much easier to measure performance and success if they already have a benchmark. Furthermore, these efforts promote post-learning reflection, allowing them to self-assess their understanding, detect pitfalls, and recognize where they have succeeded.
In action, education designers can effectively incorporate contract-related activities in advance by filling out pre-course surveys or signing contracts at the start of the learning process and clearly state what they want to achieve. For a lot of creativity, IDs can even utilize gamification techniques that mark student progress when students complete pre-determined tasks and measure post-learning performance. Overall, there is a lot of room for how to utilize the prerequisites of educational design, so feel free to move your imagination.
4. Simplification
Simplification can prove to be extremely useful in educational design for a variety of reasons, especially as it helps reduce overstimulation and cognitive load. When information is presented in large, complex blocks, learners experience cognitive overload, making it difficult to absorb and retain material. Simplification is useful by breaking down information into small chunks that are easy for learners to process and understand. For example, when using simplification in a new course, you can choose to select advanced or overly complex processes that learners think are struggling with and break them down into step-by-step manuals.
In this way, not only will it succeed in making learning more burdensome and accessible, but it will also allow learners to continue to engage in the learning process. Without obstacles, viewers can enjoy the benefits of the course much easier and more effectively over the long term.
5. Intentional fixation
Anchors link new and old information. They serve as a foundation for learning and should be used productively. To make good use of them in educational design efforts, you can strategically incorporate real scenarios, stories, or problems, intentionally “fixed” learning, making it meaningful and engaging for learners. Make sure that all intentional anchors use the learner’s prior knowledge and experience to connect them with new information. This encourages deeper understanding and retention, and promotes positive knowledge building.
Examples of intentional fixation in teaching design are listed in question-based or case-based learning curricula. Both types encourage learners to participate in rigorous research, analysis, resolution, and reflection, enhancing and reinforce knowledge acquisition and post-learning application over the long term. It also makes it clear how theoretical situations manifest in real life, and ultimately makes it possible to apply the information more relevantly.
6. Peer influence and social learning
When people see others doing the same thing, people are more likely to do something. Therefore, education designers can benefit from incorporating social proof and social learning methodology into their curriculum. Peer influence is not only a key motivation, but also a way to influence and ultimately support learning goals. It has long been established that learning occurs through observing, mimicking and modeling peers. For example, when someone takes action, there is always a consequence: good, neutral, or bad. When learners observe the impact of their peers’ behavior, they can reflect on their actions and adjust accordingly.
Educational design allows for the use of peer influence and social learning aspects by incorporating group projects, role-playing activities, peer mentoring programs, and even simulations. Although each of these techniques has its merits, if you choose to combine several, you can create a winning blend of learning that utilizes both observation and active participation. This helps to develop impactful learning experiences that promote interaction and socialization. This is an important aspect of nurturing a balanced individual.
Overcoming cognitive biases in effective behavioral economics applications
Cognitive bias can significantly hinder the learning process if the instructor designer does not take intentional behavior. These biases shape the context and perception of learning as concepts, habits, and practices. They are innate responses of the brain, but by utilizing behavioral economics insights in your educational design process, you can reduce their effectiveness.
Donation effect
This type of cognitive bias explains how people tend to place greater value on what they own, rather than what they don’t own. By helping learners develop a sense of ownership on their learning journey, they can leverage the donation effect in educational design and increase motivation and engagement. This can take the form of symbolic ownership through symbolic learning paths, through access to a personalized learning path in which learners choose how to proceed, or access to specific resources, tools, or privileges (such as extension deadlines), which ultimately motivate those resources to look like, and even consider them as rewards.
Status Quarter Bias
Current status bias is not clearly a beneficial alternative, but a form of psychological resistance in which individuals prefer the current state of current change. In the context of learning, this type of bias means that learners do not want to explore new learning methods or techniques, even if they are presented as more useful or beneficial. To overcome this form of cognitive bias, instructor designers can reconstruct the concept of change by highlighting the benefits of learning and presenting shifts with new ideas and positive light to reduce resistance. It is also important that learners engage them in the process as much as possible to overcome change, reduce stress and uncertainty, develop confidence and give them a sense of control.
Current bias
Individuals tend to choose immediate rewards over long-term benefits, which often lead to reduced efforts, procrastination, and sublearning results. To overcome this type of bias, do your best to unravel the clear benefits and real life values you gain from learning. Another way to do that is to provide immediate feedback. Although rewards themselves are not always considered rewards, instant feedback shows that learners are paying attention to their progress and that their efforts are not recognized. It is also a great way to flush them during milestones, and it will bring much better rewards upon completion.
Confirmation bias
We tend to subconsciously support information that confirms existing beliefs and often ignores conflicting evidence. This hinders critical thinking, leads to distorted interpretations and misunderstandings, and reinforces harmful stereotypes in some serious cases. Therefore, educational designers should provide balanced information, explain the diverse perspectives of each topic, encourage critical thinking, and encourage reflective practices that challenge assumptions and predispositions. It is also important here to use a variety of educational strategies to address the needs of all learners and provide everyone with the opportunity to explore and evaluate information themselves. Finally, remember that no one is immune to confirmation bias. So, be aware of your assumptions and do your best to minimize the impact on your work.
Conclusion
The job of an education designer is as difficult as it is. Should it be made more complicated by scrutinizing for insights in other areas? Well, it seems worth it. By incorporating behavioral economics insights into educational design practices, they are well equipped to detect shortages of learners before starting the course. If learners know how to act within their learning environment, they can establish measures to ensure their ultimate success. Doesn’t it sound that bad?
