Abstract

The role of persuasive strategies is crucial in designing systems to influence behaviour. Understanding how students are affected by these strategies is critical to creating customized motivational interventions and educational methods that boost student motivation, engagement, and, ultimately, academic success. In the realm of persuasive technology in education, more research that leverages the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) of motivation is needed to understand the impact of persuasive strategies, such as Self-monitoring, Commitment and Consistency, Social Comparison, and Competition on student learning. Our study sought to investigate the responsiveness of undergraduate students (N?=?185) to these persuasive strategies and how they correlate with the principles of SDT. The findings indicate that strategies such as commitment & consistency, and self-monitoring are more effective in motivating students toward specific educational objectives than competition and social comparison. Our research also uncovered diverse connections between student persuadability and the SDT constructs. Based on our results, we propose guidelines for designing more motivational education systems. These insights may help to develop and personalize persuasive educational systems and interventions. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.