The first presentation I
attended at the Sloan Conference focused on the motivations for taking and
teaching online courses. “Measuring
Motivation: What Drives Students and Faculty Participation in Online Education”
was presented by Ruth Johnson of the University of Houston. The summary of the
presentation and a link to the powerpoint presented can be found here: http://sloanconsortium.org/conference/2013/aln/measuring-motivation-what-drives-student-and-faculty-participation-online-educat
Johnson laid out the
findings of a study that she and UH colleague Cindy Stewart had conducted of
online students and faculty at their own university. The team sought to test
the degree to which motivation for taking and teaching online was intrinsic or
extrinsic to the course and the student taking it as well as the faculty member
teaching it.
A Higher Quality of Engagement and
Resulting Performance
The study began with a
template first articulated by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan of the University of
Rochester. Their studies of self-determination theory had shown that
People
are often moved by external factors such as reward systems, grades,
evaluations, or the opinions they fear others might have of them. Yet just as frequently, people are motivated
from within, by interests, curiosity, care or abiding values. These intrinsic motivations are not
necessarily externally rewarded or supported, but nonetheless they can sustain
passions, creativity, and sustained efforts.
[Edward
Deci, Richard Ryan, “About the Theory,” www.selfdeterminationtheory.org
. n.d. Dec. 20, 2013.]
While everyone is motivated
by extrinsic factors in varying degrees, the research supporting
Self-Determination Theory found that “[c]onditions supporting the individual’s
experience of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are argued to foster the
most volitional and high quality forms of motivation and engagement for activities,
including enhanced performance, persistence, and creativity.”
An intrinsically motivated
student who engages an educational opportunity because they want to gain an
understanding of the subject matter is likely to have a higher quality of
engagement and resulting performance in any educational venture regardless of
its format. Conversely, a student who is driven by considerations extrinsic to
the learning process is likely to have a lower quality learning experience and
resulting understanding of the subject.
Johnson and Stewart sought
to determine the dominant motivation of instructors and students in both online
and face-to-face (F2F) courses at the University of Houston. They hypothesized that an intrinsic
motivation for taking and teaching online courses would result in such students
taking more online courses and intrinsically motivated instructors teaching more
online courses. To test their hypothesis they surveyed 235 students at the
University of Houston and 104 of the instructors teaching there using questions
which revealed demographics and measured motivation.
Of course, such a premise is
completely reasonable. It makes perfect sense to believe that students would
take classes in a format they are drawn to engage and that faculty would teach
in the format they find most likely to result in a higher quality of engagement
and resulting performance among their students.
Surprise?
Such proved not to be the
case.
Among students, Johnson and
Stewart’s results showed that the number of online classes taken was determined
mostly by extrinsic motivations. Online extrinsic motivations included how well
classes coordinated with work schedules which were the student’s primary
concern. It also included creating schedules which could accommodate demands
arising from the home (child, elderly relative care) with school and whether
courses required commuting to campus.
Students who reported
considerations extrinsic to the course itself as the determining factors in
their choosing an online format were three times as likely to have taken online
courses as their fellow online students reporting intrinsic motivations centered
in the course itself. Such intrinsic motivations included enjoying online
format, seeing online courses as easier and a way to make better grades as well
as a means of being more responsible to the educational process itself.
Essentially, online students
took their courses online primarily for non-educational reasons. Perhaps more
telling, the extrinsically motivated online students surveyed were 10 times
more likely to have taken other online courses than face-to-face students who
took their face-to-face courses based upon intrinsic motivations regarding those
classes. Those students reported taking face-to-face classes out of enjoyment and
the opportunities for interaction with fellow students and professors.
Intrinsic face-to-face students reported feeling more motivated and responsible
in such formats and finding it an easier format in which to succeed.
Among faculty, the findings
were even more pointed. Faculty who reported being intrinsically motivated to
teach online because they enjoyed that format, who believed their students
could be more responsible and learn more in that format, were only slightly
more inclined (+.01) to have taught online than their colleagues. Similarly,
extrinsically motivated face-to-face instructors who were drawn to teach online by the appeal of
flexible schedules and no requirement to commute were slightly more inclined
(+.01) to have taught online than their colleagues.
While it would seem logical
that concerns for being able to work from home and create one’s own schedule
would result in more online courses being taught by extrinsically motivated online
faculty, in fact there was a slight negative relationship among those
professors in the number of online classes taught (-.02). However, that
negative relationship ballooned among faculty with face-to-face intrinsic
motivation (-.29) who saw in-person formats as easier to teach, providing a
greater opportunity for student learning and desired face-to-face interaction.
Not surprisingly they had taught the fewest online courses in the past. While
the faculty results are not quite as clear cut as for their students, intrinsic
concerns for the courses themselves appear to be strong predictors against
teaching online.
What’s the Bottom Line?
These findings are hardly
surprising to me. It has been my experience that strategic and surface learning
approaches have long since supplanted any desire for deep learning in most
students I encounter. This is true of both online and face-to-face students but
is particularly observable among those online. Extrinsic motivations are
strongly related to strategic approaches (What must I do to get the
grade/credit/degree I seek? What is the bottom line, the least I can do for the
maximum return?) and surface approaches (What must I do to avoid failing? What
is the least I must do and still make a passing grade?)
Strategic learners often
have trouble being fully present in their current courses regardless of format.
They worry about admissions to graduate school, getting into their chosen
professions once out of school and getting jobs that will provide them with the
maximum pay and status to allow them to feel good about themselves (or so they
tell themselves). Surface learners often are in college for extrinsic reasons to
begin with– they had nothing else to do, everyone else was going to college,
their parents forced them to go. In either case, there is limited intrinsic
motivation or resulting joy from being immersed in an educational process.
So, it is hardly a surprise to
me that the motivations for both taking and teaching courses online tend to be largely
extrinsic to a concern for learning on the part of the students and their faculty. Indeed, I know in my own case that
my primary motivations for teaching online – which currently means all four of
the classes I will teach at the university next semester - are precisely those reported by Johnson: the flexibility of my own schedule apart from
teaching, my ability to do things I actually want to do and being freed of the
daily endurance test of commuting with thousands of my most intimate friends to
campus 20 minutes from my home.
In all fairness, I have
discovered that I am able to get into some fairly decent one-on-one discussions
with students online about both the course material as well as some of the
aspects of their own lives that instructors usually discover in face-to-face
contact. I find I do come to like a
number of them or at least the virtual persona which they portray online. And I
suspect that a very small number of painfully shy students might find online
contexts easier to endure than face-to-face contexts.
But I weary of the quibbling
over content quiz questions from students who clearly are cheating on those
quizzes by using their texts and the internet to find answers. I dread the
expectable loss of up to 1/4 of the class who simply will not take the course
schedule seriously. And I also have little patience left for students who whine
about a work load well below the Carnegie Unit requirements (2 hours prep/1
hour class) to begin with who have additionally been excused from 1/3 of the
course requirements by not having to attend class.
I should hasten to add here
that I don’t entirely blame the students for these responses. They were sold this
bill of goods starting in elementary school where minimalistic pedagogies reduced
learning to Pavlovian standardized testing programs in the name of
accountability. Students learned how to adequately play the test game so they could
get passing scores, their school could get As and so their funding didn’t get
funneled to private religious schools.
Moreover, extrinsic
motivators are uncritically extolled by everyone from the President to the incessant
pounding of the private online diploma mill ads on television to the student orientation
team at the university – if you want to
get a good job, you have to get a degree. An actual education is optional.
Troubling Questions
This leaves me pondering some
deeply troubling questions. Are students really willing to settle for less? Is an
online approach driven largely by extrinsic motivations simply good enough for
most of them? Do they really have a choice? And, if so, is that a conscious,
informed choice made with an understanding of the possible consequences or have
they simply drunk the kool-aid of education understood only in the instrumentalist,
extrinsic terms they have had drilled into them?
I take up those questions in
my next post.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott
Coverston, M.Div., J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar
(inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church
(Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Lecturer: Religion and
Cultural Studies, Humanities, Philosophy of Law
University of Central
Florida, Orlando
If the unexamined life
is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or
political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not
lend themselves to production in sound bytes
.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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