How do I compare thee? An evidence-based approach to the presentation of class comparison information to students using Dashboard

ABSTRACT

Learning Dashboards display analytics pertaining to student performance and attainment, often alongside scores for the class cohort average. Little research has considered the effects of this social comparison information on students’ well-being, motivation, and engagement. The current study presented participants with hypothetical data that simulated a student performing above, below, or at the class average before measuring self-esteem, persistence on an impossible anagram task, and willingness to engage with study support services. Our results showed that where upward social comparisons were induced (exposure to Dashboard data displaying engagement and attainment below the class average), students reported lower self-esteem than participants presented with above average vignette data. Interestingly, this effect was not moderated by the grade profile of students and no effects on persistence or willingness to engage with study support were observed. We conclude that upward social comparisons in Dashboard data can have negative consequences for students’ self-esteem.

KEYWORDS:

• Social comparison
• self-esteem
• dashboard
• higher education
• students
• motivation

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Matthew East for his assistance in formatting the Dashboard stimuli. This work was funded by an Anglia Learning and Teaching Project Award from Anglia Ruskin University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The authors documented detailed demographic information to provide insight into the makeup of the population sample. This demographic information may be of use to future researchers looking to replicate or generalise this work.

2. Timing data indicated that participants spent an average of 26.22 seconds (SD = 36.65 seconds) considering the Dashboard display (with a range of 5.96 to 465.03 seconds).

3. Excluding an outlier of 4910.18 seconds, participants spent on average 226.10 seconds (SD = 243.12) on the anagram task (with a range of 1.36 to 1426.15 seconds).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annelie J. Harvey

Annelie J. Harvey is a Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University. Annelie is particularly interested in the psychology of Social Justice and her research considers how people react to victims and instances of misfortune. Annelie is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK.

Helen Keyes

Helen Keyes is a Principal Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK. Her teaching focus is on research methods and statistics provision, and she has a strong interest in evidence-lead approaches to developing student engagement and performance in this area.