Online Instructional Strategies that Affect Learner Motivation

1. Online Instructional Strategies that Affect Learner Motivation Albert L. Ingram, Ph.D. Ruth Watson, Ph.D. Kent State University

2. Online Learning • Increasing agreement on the importance of active and interactive strategies for learning • Student discussions • Cooperative learning • Collaborative learning

3. What about Motivation? • What makes students want to continue to learn? • Special problems with online motivation • How does instructor know? • What can instructor do to affect motivation?

4. Do instructional strategies affect motivation? • Focus on strategies emphasizing interactions among students • Four strategies • Small group discussions • Role playing • Brainstorming • Interviewing

5. Small Group Discussions • Build on group experiences • Formulate ideas • Build relationships • Students take responsibility for own learning

6. Role Playing • Real world problems • Small groups • Perspective-taking • Online role playing reduces self-consciousness, anxiety

7. Brainstorming • Creative problem-solving • Small groups • Idea generation • Suspension of criticism • Analysis comes later

8. Interviewing • Bring people together • Cultivate relationships • Independent activity for students • Learners must develop and ask questions

9. Learning Styles • Assumption that independent learners do best in online learning • Spread of online learning means that people with variety of styles will be in online courses • How do we teach styles other than independent? • How are different styles motivated?

10. Grasha’sSocial Learning Styles • Independent • Dependent • Competitive • Collaborative • Avoidant • Participant

11. Styles and Motivation • Competitive motivated by teacher-centered activity • Collaborative prefers working in small groups and may have difficulty working alone • Avoidant does not like teacher-student interaction • Participant enjoys discussing with others; may place the needs of others first • Dependent prefers teacher-centered instruction, do only what is required, and want clear instructions • Independent prefers to learn what is important to them

12. Measuring Motivation • Keller’s ARCS model • Attention • Relevance • Confidence • Satisfaction • Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS)

13. Methods • Participants • 6 instructors • N=64 students • Procedure • GRSLSS • Baseline IMMS • Participate in learning activity • IMMS

14. Methods • Interaction style X Strategy • Motivation is dependent variable • Interviewing (n=9), role play (n=25), brainstorming (n=31), small group (n=48)

15. Hypothesized Changes in Motivation Following Different Online Instructional Strategies

16. Data • Self-test into Social Learning Style categories • four categories represented: Collaborative, Dependent, independent, Participant • Different instructors used different strategies

17. Baseline Motivation - Total and Subscales

18. Styles - Motivation Baseline • Collaborative -- lowest baseline confidence score • Participant learners -- highest total baseline motivation score and highest scores for attention, relevance, and satisfaction • Dependent learners -- lowest total baseline motivation scores and lowest scores for attention, relevance, and satisfaction • Independent learners -- highest baseline confidence score

19. Effects of Strategies on Motivation

20. Effects of Styles Total (ARCS) Results

21. Discussion - Styles • Most online learners are not independent • Collaborative learners motivated by all strategies • Participant learners motivated by all except interviewing

22. Discussion - Styles • Dependent learners motivated by small group discussions and interviews, not by role playing and brainstorming • Independent learners motivated by brainstorming, demotivated by small group discussions, unchanged by interviewing

23. Discussion - Strategies • Interactive strategies increase motivation • Interviewing showed most increase • Followed by brainstorming and small group discussions • Role playing lowered motivation overall • Results varied according to ARCS subscales

24. Discussion - Interactions • Many of the hypothesized interactions between style and strategy were confirmed, but not all • There were clearly many such interactions, however.

25. Limitations • Sample size: not enough individuals in all style categories • Teaching/learning strategies depended on implementation by independent teachers • Learners may test high in more than one category PLUS categories are not fixed • Activities may be compatible with different styles for different reasons

26. Implications • “Learner-centered” strategies and online learning are increasingly popular • Choosing good active learning strategies can lead to higher student motivation • Especially important for high-level goals and objectives • Explicit attention to motivation will help • Effects will vary for learning styles

27. Conclusions • Importance of studying motivation for learners of all social learning preferences • Majority of online learners may not be independent • Larger samples may find learners in all categories • More strategies can be studied

28. Conclusions • Multiple use of the GRSLSS instrument after each online instructional strategy • Which strategies help learners migrate from one category to another • Learning styles not fixed • We can improve online learning experience