What Motivates Learners
For any training programme to be successful, learner motivation is an absolute must. So, what are the training characteristics that motivate learners?
Edmund Saas, a professor of education, has some answers.
In the late 1980s, Edmund conducted a study to determine student perceptions of those college classes likely to result in high and low classroom motivation. Edmund surveyed about 700 of his educational psychology students for the study.
The results of the study are discussed in Motivation in the College Classroom: What Students Tell Us, an article in the Teaching of Psychology journal (subscription required).
The following eight characteristics emerged as the top contributors to learner motivation (in order of importance):
1. Instructor's enthusiasm
2. Relevance of the material
3. Organisation of the course
4. Appropriate difficulty level of the material
5. Active involvement of learners
6. Variety of instructional methods
7. Rapport between instructor and learners
8. Use of appropriate examples
The first three characteristics had considerably higher ratings than the rest of the characteristics.
The top characteristics that students perceived as non-motivating were expectedly the opposite of the motivating characteristics:
1. Lack of variety in instructional methods
2. Disorganisation of the course
3. Little or no active learner involvement
4. Lack of involvement of the instructor
5. Lack of interpersonal warmth from the instructor
If you want further descriptions of the motivating characteristics, see David Gershaw’s article titled Motivating Students to Learn.
1 comment:
Hi Fred
One thing intresting and noticable here is that the motiviting and demotivating factors are not directly propotional.
While the biggest motivational factor is instructor enthusiasm, the most problematic factor is lack of instructional strategies. Therfore i think points 2,3,4,5,6 and 8 should be placed side by side and all of them have to be addressed to get a sucessfull course.
Even in the non-motivating charecteristics lack of interpersonal warmth would kill the class even if all other factors were there from the developers. It would be intresting to know the audience of the survey and how actually the survey was conducted. An overview look at the results gives an idea where the students were given a form to fill and they rated these factors. That might not be the best idea, and they may actually have to simulate these factors in class to get an accurate result.
Regards
Akshay
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