The impact of social norms on students' online learning behavior: Insights from two randomized controlled trials

The provision of comparative feedback is a promising approach in digital learning environments to support learners' self-regulated learning. Yet, empirical evidence suggests that such feedback can sometimes backfire or may only help learners with relatively high self-regulated learning skills, potentially exacerbating educational inequality. In this paper, we try to overcome such drawbacks by re-evaluating a feedback system based on the social norms theory that has previously led to intriguing results: A social comparison component embedded into the learning platform of a blended learning course (elective module, 58 participants) considerably encouraged online learning during the semester. Moreover, there was no heterogeneity in the behavioral response, suggesting that all subgroups responded similarly to the feedback. To further shed light on the generalizability of these results, this paper presents a follow-up study. Specifically, we conducted a second experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic with a different university course (compulsory module, 118 participants) and a non-overlapping sample and find similar results. The feedback shifted students' online learning from the end towards the middle of the semester. Overall, the findings suggest that our feedback system has a large impact on students' online learning and that this desirable impact is present in all subgroup analyses.