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There is a dearth of knowledge on how persuasiveness of influence strategies affects students' behaviours when using online educational systems. Persuasiveness is a term used in describing a system's capability to motivate desired behaviour. Most existing approaches for assessing the persuasiveness of a system are based on subjective measures (questionnaires) which are static and do not allow for automatic measurement of systems persuasiveness at run-time. Being able to automatically predict a system's persuasiveness at run-time is essential for dynamic and continuous adaptation of the system to reflect each individual user's state. In this study, we investigate the links between persuasiveness of influence strategies and students' behaviour in an online educational system for a course. We implemented and tested Machine Learning (ML) classification models to determine whether persuasiveness had a significant impact on students' usage of a learning system. Our findings revealed that students learning data can be applied to predict the persuasiveness of different influence strategies. The implications are that by using machine learning classifiers powered with learning sessions data, online educational systems would be able to automatically adapt their persuasive strategies to improve students' engagement and learning.

This paper outlines the design, development, and preliminary usability study of a system comprising (1) a web-based Indigenous lesson-creation interface and (2) an accompanying mobile app for studying the lessons. The Nisotak project was developed in response to the need for the preservation of Indigenous languages and to support reconciliation within Canada. In this paper, the authors discuss the technological aspects of the project and the less tangible decision-making that helped navigate software development in ways that support and honour Indigenous languages, Indigenous knowledge, and Indigenous people while, at the same time, making space for non-Indigenous allies. The key decisions that guided this project included privileging the target language(s), accommodating multiple dialects, creating an easy-to-use and engaging interface for non-technical users, and designing for easy transfer of ownership and management. Finally, the authors share the results of a small usability study.

Research shows that a well-designed user interface is more likely to be persuasive than a poorly designed one. However, there is a limited understanding of the relationship between user-experience (UX) design attributes and users' receptiveness to the persuasive features of a persuasive technology aimed at motivating behavior change. To bridge this gap, we carried out an online case study among 228 participants from Canada and the United States to investigate the relationship between perceived UX design attributes and users' receptiveness to persuasive features. The study serves as exploratory work by focusing on a single prototype (homepage of a fitness app); four commonly researched UX design attributes (perceived aesthetics, perceived usability, perceived credibility, and perceived usefulness); and six commonly employed persuasive features (Goal-Setting/Self-Monitoring, Reward, Cooperation, Competition, Social Comparison, and Social Learning) illustrated on storyboards. The results of the Partial Least Square Path Modeling show that perceived usefulness, followed by perceived aesthetics, has the strongest relationship with users' receptiveness to the persuasive features of a fitness app. Specifically, perceived usefulness and perceived aesthetics have a significant relationship with users' receptiveness to all but two of the six persuasive features, respectively, as well as with the overall perceived persuasiveness of the fitness app. These findings are supported by participants' comments on the perceived UX design attributes of the fitness app and the persuasive features illustrated on the storyboards. However, perceived usability and perceived credibility have weak or non-significant relationships with users' receptiveness to the six persuasive features. The findings suggest that designers should prioritize utilitarian benefits (perceived usefulness) and hedonic benefits (perceived aesthetics) over perceived usability and perceived credibility when designing fitness apps to support behavior change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]