xDelia: D18-2.4.2 Learning Intervention Package - Development and Evaluation (Year 3)

Abstract

The core purpose of xDelia is to develop learning approaches to improve the financial decision making of private investors who trade frequently using a trading platform. This group has significant economic importance in the EU, and is sufficiently well understood to be a viable target of learning interventions. Much financial training has, to date, focused primarily on imparting propositional knowledge and increasing people’s understanding. However, investors may have appropriate knowledge, but despite this go on to be ruled by their attitudes, habits, or emotional states. Emotions mediate both rapid expert situation recognition and the application of expert intuition but also important persistent biases in decision-making such as framing effects and the disposition effect in particular. There is an increasing body of evidence that effective emotion regulation can reduce maladaptive biases mediated via emotions whilst still allowing the application of expert intuition. Investigating this, the project has developed new, technologically supported approaches to training; and the project has developed support for non-formal and informal learning in real-world trading settings to tackle the challenges faced by investors when they make financial decisions. This document sets out the nature and scope of the final xDelia learning pathway, its pedagogical underpinnings and constituent elements. A summary of major functionalities are described and learning applications. This document focuses on the evolution of the learning pathway in Year 3 of the xDelia Project and presents the final form of the learning pathway we have designed and its constituent elements. To be maximally useful to those wishing either to deploy the approaches and tools we have developed or to carry out further research and development, we also include a summary account of our evaluation of our learning approach1 and (in the appendices) documentation for each of the learning elements