Understanding Motivation

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Understanding Motivation

• What is Motivation?

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Student Motivation in the College Classroom

• What factors influence it?
• Sociocultural Context
• Classroom Environmental Factors
• Internal Factors (Beliefs/Perceptions)
• Motivated Behavior

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Understanding Your Own Motivation

• Evaluate your behaviors in three areas
• Choice of behavior
• Level of activity and involvement
• Persistence and management of effort

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Sociocultural Context

• Cultural Factors can influence your motivation
• Attitudes, beliefs, and experiences you bring to
• college based on your sociocultural experiences
  that
• influence motivation and behaviors.

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Internal Factors

• Goals you set
• Serve to Motivate Behavior
• Affect Mastery and Performance
• Ask yourself, what are my goals?
• Are they defined goals in Long and Short Terms?
• Are they clear and well defined?
• Are they set goals different life areas?

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5 Major Ways Goals Enhance Your Performance

• Effort
• Duration and Persistence
• Direction of Attention
• Strategic Planning
• Reference Point

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Effects on Effort

• Goals setting influences what you do and how hard
  you maximize your performance
• The more difficult the goalthe harder you work
  towards attaining it.

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Effects on Duration or Persistence

• Without goals, it easy to be
• Distracted
• Attention drifts
• More easily interrupted
• Stop work without task completion
• With goals, you have defined point of performance
• Know when to quit the task

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Effects on Attention

• Goals direct your attention toward the task
• Goals direct you attention away from distractions

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Strategic Planning

• To accomplish a goal, you need
• An action plan or strategic planning
• Goal setting encourages strategic planning and
  helps determine how you proceed

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Reference Point

• Identifies where you are headed
• Allows you to receive feedback from that point
• Determines any further actions that need taken

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Two Types of Goals

• Mastery Goals
• Oriented toward learning as much as possible

• Performance Goals
• Focuses on comparison and competition

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Mastery Performance

Success defined as Improvement, progress, creativity High grades, high performance compared to others
Value placed on Effort, academic ventures Demonstrates high performance relative to effort
Basis for satisfaction Progress, challenge,mastery Doing better that others
Error viewed as Part of the learning process, informational Failure, evidence of lack of ability
Ability viewed as Developing through effort Fixed
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How do you value different academic courses and
tasks?

• Values and Interest
• Play an important role on academic behaviors
• Affect student activities
• Affect level of persistence
• Affect student choices

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Can You Do Well on Different Academic Tasks?

• Self-Efficacy plays an important role
• How you evaluate your own abilities or skills to
  successfully complete a task
• Rating your self-efficacy
• A rating too high or too low can be detrimental

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Causes of Successes and Failures

• Discuss
• How can a C grade on two individual term papers
  be interpreted as both a success and a failure?

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Why the two different responses?

• Goals

• Attribution
• Explains why people respond differently to
  outcomes.
• Perception about the cause of success and failure
• differ

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• How students perceive prior successes and
  failures is an important determiner of how they
  approach their next tasks.

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Rate the Responses as Positive or Negative

• I did well because Im smart.
• I studied hard for the test, but it wasnt
  enough.
• The test was easy.
• I was lucky.
• The professor was fair.

• I did poorly because Im stupid.
• I studied hard for the test but still did not get
  it.
• The test was hard.
• I was unlucky.
• The professor was unfair.
• I was tired.

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Respond to these questions

• When I perform poorly, do I attribute my
  performance to uncontrollable factors?
• Are there alternative explanations for the causes
  of my academic performances?

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What are some factors that can negatively affect
your performance?

• Boredom

Anxiety
Worry
Self-Doubt
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Negative Impacts on Performance

• Boredom
• It is not a reasonit is an excuse!!!
• Often implies that the learner does not
  understand the material

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Negative Impacts on Performance

• Anxiety
• Can negatively impact performance 4 ways
• Disruption in mental activity
• Psychological distress
• Misdirected attention
• Inappropriate behaviors

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Negative Impacts on Performance

• Worrying can be a major factor
• Has a strong negative impact academic performance
• Negative beliefs
• Troubling thoughts
• Poor decisions

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Negative Impacts on Performance

• Psychological distress
• Emotionality
• This seems to diminish after a test begins
  whereas, worry continues

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Inappropriate Behaviors

• Procrastination
• Test anxiety
• Lack of persistence until task completion

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Covingtons Theory of Self-Worth

• Strategies that protect against inferences on an
  individuals lack of ability
• Procrastination
• Unattainable Goals
• Underachievers
• Anxiety

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In Class Exercise
Attribution Suggested Responses
I lack ability.
I didnt feel well.
I wasnt in the mood.
Im not interested in the task
I dont do well on tests.
The material was boring. The test was unfair.
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Assignment

• Select two (2) different courses you are
  currently takingone difficult and one less
  challenging or one that you like and one that you
  dont like. Analyze your motivation in the two
  classes by discussing IN DETAIL each of the
  following factors that determine your motivated
  behaviors.
• Use a graph like the example that follows

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Motivation and Goal Exercise
Class 1 Class 2
Goals
Interest and Values
Self-Efficacy beliefs
Test Anxiety
Mastery vs. performance goal