Understanding Motivation in Instructional Design
Types of Motivation
Attempting to motivate students is a difficult task in any classroom. Within the context of the classroom, motivation usually leans towards the willingness of the student to participate in activities and achieve a goal (Cheng & Yeh, 2009). There are two types motivation that an Instructional Designer must account for when deciding what and how to design a course.
Extrinsic motivation is external to the individual and comes from incentives, rewards, and possible consequences. Intrinsic motivation is deemed internal to the individual or the cause of the motivation comes from within the individual. It is part of our nature to engage in activities that we find interesting and provide us some type of pleasure (Park, n.d.). This type of motivation comes about from curiosity, the needs to feel competent, and personal growth in a specific area. Individuals are more likely to engage in activities and tasks where they feel as the goal is worth achieving all while creating a sense of competency (Cheng & Yeh, 2009).
Advantages
While extrinsic motivated behavior can lead to successful goal attainment, individuals may only exert enough energy to meet the desired goal, intrinsically motivated behavior has significant advantages. First, intrinsically motivated students are more apt to take on more challenging tasks. Secondly, learners gain more from the material when they find the it interesting, next conditions supporting this motivation often encourage conceptual learning. Lastly, intrinsic motivation often comes with genuine pleasure and more involvement from the activity (Cheng & Yeh, 2009). Both types of motivation must be taken into consideration when designing a course.
ARCS Model
Grounded in the expectancy theory, the ARCS model includes four conditions and is a system based on improving the motivational appeal of instructional materials and behavior. This also applies to the manner in which lessons and courses are designed (Cheng & Yeh, 2009). The ARCS model stands for attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction. It is based on the three distinctive features including the above four characteristics, motivational strategies, and a design model that can be incorporated in other various learning models (Cheng & Yeh, 2009). As the first element of ARCS, attention is meant to grab the student and keep them motivated, relevance is included as a reference to keeping the student engaged in the material. Confidence increases the learners persistence in the learning process, and finally satisfaction represents the level of enjoyment the learner pulled from the material (Cheng & Yeh, 2009).
Applying ARCS to Instructional Design
The second component of the ARCS model is motivational design which is broken down into four different phases - define, design, develop, and pilot. We will not venture into these, but the overall process is to create motivational objectives and materials, build them out, and then finally pushing it out into the target population and seek feedback for any revisions that need to be made (Cheng & Yeh, 2009). The ARCS model may not be a full fledged learning design model, but can be adapted to other learning models. It is a supplemental model and should be used in conjunction with other designs to increase the motivational factor for learners.
Motivation has seen a renewed interest in as more classes and students have moved to remote learning. Based on the expectancy theory which assumes that individuals are motivated to engage in activities if they believe that it will correlate to personal satisfaction and help them be successful (Kurt, 2022). The ARCS model, developed by Dr. John Keller, was designed to assist Instructional designers add motivational elements to online course design.
Future Reference:
Works Referenced:
Cheng, Y.-C., & Yeh, H.-T. (2009). From concepts of motivation to its application in instructional design: Reconsidering motivation from an instructional design perspective. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40(4), 597–605. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2008.00857.x
Kurt, Dr. S. (2022, October 17). Model of motivation: ARCS instructional design. Education Library. https://educationlibrary.org/model-of-motivation-arcs-instructional-design/
Park, S. W. (n.d.). Seung won Park. open.byu.edu. https://open.byu.edu/lidtfoundations/motivation_theories_and_instructional_design#:~:text=The%20theory%20explains%20how%20to,more%20self%2Ddetermined%20extrinsic%20motivation.
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