PhD Defence: Agnieszka Kloc

Abstract

Digital platforms play an increasingly important role in how students learn. They make education more flexible, more accessible, and often more personalized. At the same time, these platforms are often designed with commercial goals in mind, such as rapid growth and efficiency. This can conflict with what learning truly requires, such as concentration, perseverance, or peer support.
This dissertation examines how the design of digital platforms influences students’ learning processes. The central question is how specific design choices affect students’ behavior, motivation, and well-being, and when these effects differ across students.
To address this question, three studies were conducted. The first study focuses on leaderboards, which stimulate competition among students. The results show that their effect depends on how scores are constructed and on how competitive a student is. The second study examines platforms that offer both free and paid educational content. It shows that providing more content samples does not always lead to greater engagement with learning or a higher willingness to pay for learning materials. The third study looks at study-related content on social media and shows that viewing such content can have both positive and negative effects on learning motivation and well-being.
Together, the studies demonstrate that seemingly small design choices can have significant consequences, and that these effects strongly depend on the individual student. This highlights the importance of careful and deliberate design choices in digital learning environments.