Motivational Learning

Irene Ruiz, PharmD

PGY-1 Pharmacy Resident

University of Maryland Medical Center

Motivation is a strong predictor and a fundamental skill for academic success. Those who are motivated tend to perform better in school and within their careers.^1,2 Motivation is the reason one behaves or acts in a particular way and drives a person to accomplish something.¹ Motivational learning is necessary to engage all students in the classroom setting. The goal of motivational learning is to give students a reason to learn the material beyond the necessity of learning solely to pass a course. Educators should strive to elevate their students from extrinsic to intrinsic learners.

There are multiple pertinent theories surrounding this topic with the Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Theory predominating. This theory relies on the foundations that intrinsic motivation leads students to accomplish tasks because of their own contentment, they do not need external factors to drive them. Usually, this attitude helps carry these students to perform well as they have internal desires to learn, improve themselves and avoid mistakes. Those who are motivated by extrinsic factors require positive/negative reinforcement such as a reward or punishment to accomplish tasks. A strong extrinsic factor for many students is their grades and failing a class.^2,3 They often want to avoid the repercussions rather than learn the material for personal growth. Extrinsic learners tend to lack the initiative to seek additional resources and tasks to preform above the standard. They also require the promise of material gain to pursue higher education and knowledge in their given field.⁴

A model presented based on the fundamentals of behavior and emotion is the ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction) model. This model presents the idea that students can be motivated directly using attractive, satisfying and stimulating learning material. If you can create an environment that grabs the attention of the students, this may spark interest in any given subject that they themselves were not aware of. Students may even enter a course or begin studying the material with preexisting ideas and biases on what to expect. If the instructor can present the material in a more attractive way, these biases can be overturned and allow the student to acquire a higher level of interest on the material. This can then allow the students to develop more intrinsic motivation, pushing them towards a more self-driven approach.⁴

Another theory that focuses on improving the performance of extrinsic learners is the Expectancy theory. The theory states that there is a direct relationship between the amount of effort put into a task and the performance that can be achieved from the learners. The theory depicts that strong effort will lead to a better performance, which leads to positive reward. The idea is that the learners are expected to perform their tasks with a genuine and maximum amount of effort in order to achieve an acceptable performance. When the instructor acknowledges the genuine effort, the performance will then be rewarded. This theory was first used in a working environment and later expanded and revised for education. This seems to fit better in a working environment as it rewards an outcome and performance-based system. Perhaps with a mixture of other motivational theories this can help kickstart and develop academic discipline in students who are heavily driven by extrinsic motivation.⁴

Understanding whether a classroom has intrinsically, or extrinsically motivated students will help an instructor better engage all students to complete tasks and learn. Stated in each theory is the recognition of intrinsic and extrinsic learning. It is tasked then, by successful implementation of the theories from the instructors, to help guide the development of their learners from reward-based learning to a genuine interest in the material.

References

1.    Pelaccia T, Viau R. Motivation in medical education. Med Teach. 2017;39(2):136-140. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27866457/.

2.    Sedden ML, Clark KR. Motivating students in the 21^st century. Radiol technol. 2016;87(6):609-616. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27390228/

3.    Psychology: Motivation and Learning [Internet]. 3030 [cited 2020Sep20]. Available from https://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/learning-theory-research/motivation/.

4.    Gopalan V, Abu Bakar JA, Zulkifli AN, et al. A review of the motivation theories in learning. AIP Conference Proceedings. 2017;1891(1):020043. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.5005376