We are happy to announce that the paper “Designing a mobile chatbot-based learning journaling system for intrinsic motivation and engagement” co-authored by Sven Scheu, Simone Löffler, and Alexander Maedche has been published in the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. We propose a system that guide students through structured reflective journal entries and supports writing through an LLM-based journaling assistant. The novel system combines (1) an example-based built-in course that teaches reflective journaling through modeled responses with (2) an interactive journaling assistant that scaffolds students’ entries by generating follow-up questions and rewrite suggestions.  A randomized field experiment with 179 students over 22 days found that the built-in course increased intrinsic motivation, while the LLM-based journaling assistant did not. Both improved engagement differently: the course had a steady positive effect, whereas the LLM assistant boosted engagement over time through a feedback loop. 

The research results are available through the AMSL project in the form of a fully functional mobile app and an open source software project. The paper is online available here:  

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41239-026-00589-7