Motivation is the driving force by which we achieve our goals, and is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation)
Intrinsic motivation, is the collection of reasons that exist within the individual for performing a task rather than there being any external reasons Bainbridge(2010). Within an education context students must have one or more good reasons for learning a particular subject or course if they are to be effective learners.
Intrinsic motivation is usually associated with learning because of enjoyment by the learner, and/or desire for high educational achievement.
Extrinsic motivation on the other hand is as a result of impact from outside of the individual. This includes rewards such as money or praise, competition, or coercion and the threat of punishment for achieving lower than expected grades perhaps.
Extrinsic motivation in online education is extremely important for a number of reasons. Learning in an online environment can leave students feeling isolated because of limited physical contact with fellow students and tutors. Other problems include difficulty with understanding the technology related to the online learning environment, confusing instructions or tasks, technical breakdowns, badly designed learning materials, or tutors that are not experienced with teaching online.
Extrinsic motivation we argue in this discussion can come from education establishments by carefully designing courses and learning activities that increase the learner’s sense of presence to a level where being involved in the community of enquiry is so immersing that education becomes pleasurable, motivating, and fulfilling.
This requires recognition from educators that as digital technology is rapidly evolving, so with it are our identities. And therefore education too needs to evolve in order to keep pace with the needs of our new identities, otherwise students will feel that the teaching establishments are out of touch with modern reality and they may lose interest.
“Every kind of technology is an extension of our nervous system, which imprints our imagination with the realm of the possible.” Cousin, G. (2005).
Another way to think about motivation in modern online education, is that today there exist many more distractions than there were decades ago in both social life and in entertainment, developed through rapidly evolving online technologies. And therefore online education in order to succeed, needs to compete with all of these distractions by creating immersing learning that can outshine all of these distractions.
Category: E-Learning
