Social behavioral sensing: an exploratory study to assess learning motivation and perceived relatedness of university students using mobile sensing

Abstract

Learning motivation plays a crucial role in student’s daily study life since it greatly affects academic performance and engagement. Perceived relatedness, based on self-determined theory, is an important predictor of learning motivation. Today, assessment for both of them still relies on subjective evaluations and self-reports, which is time-consuming and onerous. Hence, we propose a novel approach blended with mobile sensing by simultaneously collecting psychological measurements and objective mobile sensing data from N=58 undergraduates to explore new methods of assessing learning motivation and perceived relatedness. We identify a variety of social behavioral patterns from mobile sensing data, and investigate associations between psychological measures and these patterns. Our study helps enlighten what the new forms of assessing learning motivation and perceived relatedness in education could be, and paves the way for personalizing intervention in future research.