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University of Oklahoma With having to manage time, making sure assignments get in on time and staying current on class discussions, studying online can become challenging. That is why when a student achieves in their classes, they tend to feel pretty good about themselves. Sometimes this pushes the student to achieve higher goals within their schooling, such as making the honor roll, or carrying a certain GAP. But what gets an individual going and starting to work at these goals? Motivation!
Motivation is defined as “the act or an instance of motivating, or providing with a reason to act in a certain ay’ (Motivation, 2013) When an individual sets a goal, the individual needs to have the initiative to motivate their selves to tackle their own goal to its fullest. This is known as self-determination theory. Self- determination is defined as by “determination by oneself or itself, without outside influence. ” (Self-determination, 2013) Motivation is a universal need that every individual actually has, Just people don’t think about it while they are working towards a wanted activity.
Motivation is actually one of the underlying attributes to making our world we live in, go round. Without motivation, we wouldn’t have anything that we overlook as necessity to us. Our world would be stuck in the caveman years and we would still be trying to figure out how to start the fire at night to keep warm. It is unfortunate that many individuals don’t think about this, and take things for granted. Something that some individuals take for granted is the chance to go to college and be successful while taking classes.
While partying and staying in sorority or fraternity homes seems like the life any college student dreams. But for some individuals that work a full time Job and maybe eave children, this type of life is a past dream. These types of individuals are looking for a way to go to school while not dropping obligations they already have and where they do not have to attend at set times of the day. College’s around the United States has heard these cries for decades, and has now changed the idea of going to school.
Now not only are online classes offered, but so are online degrees. With these changes colleges have provided, it is now up to the student on how motivated they are to get the schooling they desire. With online classes, individuals should possess kills. Without these characteristics, individuals can lose focus and not receive the grades they wished for. An online Journal by Sheen-Chaw Tests and Chin-Chunk Tsar states Students with motivation to learn about a topic would tend to engage and enhance more in their learning activities (Zimmerman, 2000).
Their motivation varies not only in different levels (I. E. , how much motivation), but also in different orientations (I. E. , intrinsic or extrinsic). As an example, a student can be highly motivated to do homework out of curiosity and interest or, alternatively, he or she ants to get the approval of teachers or parents. (Tests and Tsar, 2010) “Although motivation is essential to learning no matter the context, it is particularly critical when learning online, where whether students engage the material, how, and how long, is entirely within their control (e. . , Seasons et al. 2002). ” Motivation also serves as an inner need that is met for the student when they are doing well. Having the satisfaction knowing that something was accomplished because of their actions will make any individual feel good about themselves. Students need that feeling inside to be able to recognize they can do online schooling and to keep attending, this is a form of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is defined as an individual’s belief in their own ability to obtain a goal or task they have set out to do.
The idea of self-efficacy comes from Albert Bandeau with the social cognitive theory which focuses on individuals with their actions and reactions and their social learning. To help understand self- efficacy and how it correlates with academics Karen Clayton, Fran Plumber and Daniel P. Laud states “An established finding is that self-efficacy is a strong predictor of academic performance and course satisfaction in traditional class-rooms.
Findings also show that students with high academic self-efficacy are more flexible in their use of learning strategies than those with low academic self-efficacy’ (Bandeau, 1997). There are also many factors that play into self-efficacy. These factors can be from outside sources or internal within an individual. It is important that when a student is going to school, they keep their selves healthy and find things that continue to titivated them.
Key factors affecting self-efficacy include: An online source states that some key factors in having positive self-efficacy are: Positive, mastery experiences that give students a sense of accomplishment when they have faced a challenge, Positive, vicarious experiences that occur when students see others succeed and feel an increased sense of their own ability to succeed, Social persuasion, where other people either increase or decrease a student’s sense of confidence and ability to succeed, and Negative, physiological reactions that might occur as a result of stress, oppression, or anxiety. “What factors affect,” 2013) With online classes becoming challenging at times, it is upon the student to find what motivates them to continue with getting an education. With the major goal being to get good grades, this motivation brings in a bigger picture of motivation. This bigger picture of course is to use the classes the student is taking to get a degree. Then with that degree the student can hopefully use it within the workforce and maybe even bring in more money. These motives that are being referred to are extrinsic motivation.
Extrinsic titivation is referenced to when looking at a motive that an individual has and in hopes to receive a certain outcome in the end. This is opposed to intrinsic motivation which is normally referenced to when looking at motivation in regards to an pressure. Some may ask why going to school online is mostly an extrinsic motivation with individuals instead of intrinsic. The reason comes down to that intrinsic motivation is normally a short term motivation. In most cases when there is intrinsic motivation, there is an outside source that is pressuring an individual to go to school.
Until that individual finds another motive (and extrinsically) to go to school, their energy with the motivation is going to be lost quickly. With extrinsic motivation, there is not this issue and an individual doesn’t have any outside sources pressuring them to do the activity. In the article Student Motivation and the Alignment of Teacher Beliefs it states that “Two major influences on students’ intrinsic motivation is their individual interest, which is a child’s inherent desire to learn certain concepts, and situational interest, which are environmental factors that generate interest. (Hessian, 2012) A good example of this would with a second grade class. The motivation is to get a hundred percent on each spelling quiz to be a part of a pizza party at the end of the semester. Well once that semester is over, if no other rewards are offered, the studying and goal to get a hundred percent on spelling quizzes goes down. The motivation has gone out the window after it stopped, because there is no self-satisfaction to the student to continue to get a hundred on their quizzes. The same logic goes with a college student taking online courses.
If the detent only has intrinsic motivation to go to school online, the student may not perform well till they find an extrinsic motivation to keep them focused and stay in school. Judy Cameron also adds that “rewards and incentive systems generally disrupt students’ intrinsic motivation across all types of activities. ” (Cameron, 2001) With schools starting to offer online classes more and more each year, schools are starting to see the preference to take online classes higher than in the classroom.
New York Times writer Steve Lour’s article Study Finds That Online Education Beats he Classroom states “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. ” (Lour, 2009)The article also goes on to state that the study was done over twelve years and that “on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. ” (Lour, 2009) With this striking evidence, some question on what motives students to take online class than taking regular classes.