Academic Motivation of University Students Towards the Usage of Web 2.0 Technologies: Undergraduate Motivation Among Web 2.0 Tool Use

Introduction

Human behavior is dynamic, constantly changing, adapting, and most often depending by social, economical, cultural, and educational contexts. Consequently, behaviour is only rarely predictable. However, for the understanding and subsequent prediction of behavior it is necessary to know as accurately as possible the internal and external factors that influence it.

Motivation (Panisoara & Panisoara, 2005), from the perspective of subsequent behavior is the selection, orientation and maintenance of a path justified by the purpose and objectives of each person (Ifinedo, 2017). Briefly, the motivation is appreciated to be a set of internal and external factors that influences the behavior of a person (Böheim, Knogler, Kosel, & Seidel, 2020; Sun, 2008; Wu, 2020). It would be particularly interesting to be able to find out, in the greatest possible proportion, which are the motivational factors who influence the behavioral intention to use web-based technologies (Moon & Kim, 2001) into an educational environment. The academic motivation of university students is considered to have a significant effect on the intention to use Web 2.0 technologies by researchers (Ellison & Wu, 2008). In the current socio-economic context, the digital users’ orientation is evident in the direction of increasing the use of Web 2.0 technologies. Therefore, a deeply understanding of the effects of motivational factors on human behaviours is necessary to be performed (Brown, 2002).

Motivation is a fundamental psychological concept and represents a set of aspirations, personal beliefs, desires, intentions with the purpose of fulfilling an aspiration (Lazar, 2019a, 2019b). Precisely, human action is usually based on motivation. On the other hand, professional motivation and success are closely linked. According to Chon & Shin motivation brings together “subscales ranging from poor to more strong forms of motivation on a continuum (e.g., amotivation, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation), where intrinsic motivation has mostly been found to be the most robust form of motivation that can promote learning and achievement” (Chon & Shin, 2019). From Zeynali and collaborators perspective, academic motivation represented the tendency of a student “to find academic activities meaningful and worthwhile and to try to derive the intended academic benefits from them” (Zeynali, Pishghadam, & Hosseini Fatemi, 2019). Motivation can also be interpreted as an external factor, as a result of which behavioral changes can occurred. In this direction remained the research carried out by Maulana, Opdenakker, & Bosker who believed that ”students are capable of performing certain tasks (self-efficacy), and tend to be more engaged academically, use more cognitive strategies” (Maulana, Opdenakker, & Bosker, 2016).

During the present investigation, two research hypotheses were identified, such as:

• H1: University students’ intention to use web-based technologies was strongly and directly influenced by her/his perceived challenges of Web 2.0 tools and applications.

• H2: Intrinsic motivation was the most important form of motivation that can influence intention to use the Web 2.0 tools and applications across university students.

In order to be able to answer such questions, it is necessary to model the behaviour of students in the context of adopting Web 2.0 technologies to identified predictive factors in each specific context. Web 2.0 commonly used by undergraduate students who voluntary participated at experimental study case described in this chapter were the following:

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  Web 2.0 applications (e.g. Google Docs)

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  Web 2.0 educational tools (e.g. Microsoft Photo Story 3)

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  social networking sites (Facebook)

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  online Web 2.0 services like video hosting sites (e.g. YouTube)