Influence of Monetary and Non-monetary Incentives on Students’ Behavior in Blended Learning Settings in Higher Education

Stieglitz Stefan, Eschmeier Annika, Steiner Michael

Abstract

Previous research shows that blended learning has the ability to in-crease the learners’ motivation and learning success. However, motivational as-pects in blended learning have not been sufficiently researched yet. We there-fore investigated the influence of non-monetary and monetary incentives on learners’ behavior. We selected “likes” as a non-monetary incentive and ena-bled students to rate other students’ posts (similar to Facebook). In a second turn, a monetary incentive (a tablet PC or the cash equivalent, respectively) was raffled among the students of a top 10 “like”-ranking. Based on log-file data and survey results, we observe that both variations ((1) only “likes” and (2) “likes” & tablet PC prize) do not differ with respect of their influence on the overall activity of learners during the lecture. Thus, the additional monetary in-centive did not increase activity. We conclude that monetary incentives do not seem to be efficient.