Wenyu Yan’s scientific contributions

In the area of online teacher training, asynchronous collaboration faces several chal‑ lenges such as limited learner engagement and low interaction quality, thereby hinder‑ ing its overall efectiveness. Drawing on social comparison theory, providing social comparison feedback to teacher-learners in online asynchronous collaborative learning ofers benefts, but also has drawbacks. While social comparison has been explored in diverse felds, its role in education remains unclear. In this study, we selected 95 pri‑ mary and secondary school teachers participating in an online training course. Using randomized controlled trial design, we provided the experimental group with social comparison feedback, while the control group received only self-referential feedback. We used epistemic network analysis, lag sequential analysis, and social network analysis to identify the impact of social comparison feedback on group-regulated focus, group-interactive behaviors, and social network structures. The results showed that social comparison feedback signifcantly enhanced teachers’ online asynchronous collabora‑ tive learning.

Online teacher training is one of the crucial ways for teacher professional development. High-quality online asynchronous collaborative learning can effectively promote the effect of online training for teachers, yet the characteristics such as non-real-time nature make online asynchronous collaborative learning face challenges. Based on the perspective of social comparison, this study constructed a social comparative feedback mechanism for online asynchronous collaboration, including the online learning activity module, the data collection and processing module, and the social comparison module, providing teachers with social comparative feedback in four dimensions: behavior, cognition, interaction, emotion, and verified the effectiveness of this mechanism through a quasi-experimental study. The results indicate that social comparative feedback helps to improve teachers' group collaborative learning performance and significantly improve teachers' learning motivation and satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to provide theoretical and practical reference for improving the effectiveness of online teacher training and promoting the high-quality construction of teaching staff.