Foundations of Motivational Research and Design in Online Distance Learning

Introduction

Effective teaching of an online course requires more than just implementing a traditional course design and delivery process that typically focuses on organizing and sequencing content. These are necessary components of a well-designed course and might sometimes be sufficient for success, but only if students want to learn the content and if the course is not implemented in a way that kills their motivation. This can be a serious problem in online instruction, especially with self-instructional courses where it might be assumed that students will be motivated to succeed simply because they have enrolled in the course. But there are at least two problems with this. The first is that they might be required to take the course and they have no intrinsic interest in it. The second is they might be interested at the beginning of the course, but their interest is killed because there are too many challenges in the learning environment. An example, especially when the course participants are working adults is that the learners are overworked and there can be many distractions in the environments in which they are trying to learn.

Other obstacles can include psychological challenges such at the fear of failure and debilitating boredom. Still other problems include busy schedules, lack of energy, and lack of time. Another set of problems is related to the course design and delivery requirements. Online courses can require a great deal of time for planning, monitoring, reviewing documents, providing feedback and other problems such as the way e-learning is designed and delivered. These problems can include poorly designed materials and confusing navigation systems which can leave one “lost in hyperspace,” as one writer put it. And there can be content that presents students with serendipitous opportunities to pursue personal interests that take them away from the main line of instruction. And still another group of problems can be a lack of social support. In spite of the many social media tools that are available and frequently used in personal life, they might not be used to overcome the isolation of learners working at a distance.

How to meet these challenges is the focus of this chapter which describes a motivational theory and process known as the ARCS model (Keller, 2007, 2010), or more recently, the ARCS-V model. This model provides a synthesis of motivational and volitional concepts and strategies together with a process, known as motivational design, for applying them to the design and development of instruction (Keller & Deimann, 2012; Keller, Ucar, & Kumtepe, 2018; Ucar & Kumtepe, 2018). It also provides a foundation for both theoretical and applied research on motivation and learning. The chapter opens with a description of the theoretical foundation of the model and then transitions to descriptions of motivational strategies and tactics associated with each of its major conceptual categories. The next section describes how these motivational concepts and categories are incorporated in applications of the model to the design of instruction. Being motivated to learn is not a static condition. The kinds of activities that are used at the beginning of a course to stimulate learners’ motivation to learn are different from those that sustain motivation during the course and also different from those that result in a successful conclusion. Within this context, the aim of this chapter is to provide a framework and foundation for theoretical and applied papers dealing with motivation and performance in online distance learning. In addition, volition and engagement issues related to motivation will be discussed in this context.