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Assessing motivational factors in educational technology: the case of building a web site as course assignment
Author(s) -
Reber Rolf
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
british journal of educational technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.79
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-8535
pISSN - 0007-1013
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8535.2004.00441.x
Subject(s) - citation , psychosocial , web site , psychology , library science , world wide web , the internet , computer science , psychiatry
Motivational factors often predict how much effort students exert in the same activityagain (Kukla, 1972), and how probably they persist or drop out from school (Hardre &Reeve, 2003). Motivational factors are rarely in the focus of research on educationaltechnology. As many studies report no advantage in knowledge acquisition in compar-ison to traditional approaches to teaching (see Voogt & Van den Akker, 2001), the useof educational technology may be undervalued if motivational factors are not assessed.I report here a case study where students had to build a web site on a chosen topicwithin a course. As this activity is a constructive and collaborative form of knowledgeacquisition (e.g. Greeno, Collins & Resnick, 1996), one would predict that students havemore autonomy in pursuing their interests and therefore report more course motiva-tion, even if they do not learn more from this activity than from traditional teaching.