Effectiveness of a “Nudge” for Online Discussion Participation About Attitude Toward Essay Writing

Abstract

“Nudges” were used as incentives to promote greater online discussion activity. Their effectiveness was evaluated using text analysis of the characteristics of essays. The participants who were prompted to write comments were defined as people who posted only a single time. In order to evaluate their attitudes, essay texts were analysed as a form of learning performance. The length of essays of self-motivated participants and those who were prodded increased. The frequency of dependency pairs in the essay texts also increased along with the level of participation in online discussions. However, there were no differences in the lengths of essay comments, which remained similar between the three participation levels. The results of analysis of extracted term frequency using sentiment analysis show the same tendency for essay reports. The characteristics of essays of participants who were prompted are summarised.