Themes in ARCS-Related Research

The importance of students’ motivation, volition, and beliefs has been recently emphasized in mathematics education. However, despite extensive research acknowledging students’ motivation, volition, and beliefs as critical factors for their attitudes, study habits, and achievement, there has yet to emerge a robust framework encompassing relevant theoretical foundations and empirical evidence. Moreover, much of the previous research has been conducted without an integrative view of the key constructs, and, as a consequence, tends to overlook the interconnectedness among the constructs. Given this gap, this study intended to build a conceptual framework for research on motivation, volition, and beliefs for the improvement of students’ attitudes, study habits, and achievement in mathematics education. The framework was grounded in a review of relevant theories and models as well as empirical studies. This exploratory experimental study focused on the cumulative effects of email messages designed in accordance with the framework, and, as a consequence, it provided an initial validation of the framework in the context of the design, development and evaluation of interventions in mathematics education. Specifically, this study investigated the effects of motivation and volition change strategies and belief change strategies as implemented with targeted email as personal and group messages on students’ attitudes, study habits, and achievement in a calculus course for non-mathematics majors.

 

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of including adaptive confidence strategies in instructionally sound computer-assisted instruction (CAI) on learning and learner confidence.

 

Seventy-one general educational development (GED) learners recruited from various GED learning centers at community colleges in the southeast United States were randomly assigned to one of three levels of independent variable: Absence of Adaptive Confidence Strategies Condition (non-adaptive, or NA), Adaptive Confidence Strategies with Program Control Condition (PC), or Adaptive Confidence Strategies with Shared Control Condition (SC).

 

In the NA condition, learners received instructionally sound CAI that did not measure nor respond to changes in learner confidence during the learning process. In the other two conditions, learners received instructionally sound CAI that did measure and respond to changes in learner confidence by implementing various confidence building and confidence sustaining strategies during the learning process, but that differed in the amount of control allowed to learners.

 

Implementing the adaptive confidence strategies involved the CAI program collecting learner performance data (e.g., from practice items) and learner self-reported confidence data (from an embedded confidence analysis), interpreting the data using a confidence diagnosis-prescription rubric in order to diagnose the confidence state of the learner, and finally prescribing confidence strategies based on the diagnosis.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of reusable motivational objects (RMO) and a motivational design aid (MDA) on instructional designers’ performance and attitude. 

Thirty five upper‐level college students who were enrolled in a Mathematics education course were recruited and split into three groups based on their schedule availability. Each group was randomly assigned to one of three levels of independent variable: RMO with MDA condition, RMO Only condition, and Control condition. Participants performed a task of designing motivationally enhanced RLO‐based instruction with given motivational design supports depending on their treatment level. The participants in the RMOMDA condition used an RMO repository and MDA while those in the RMO condition used only RMO repository. The control condition did not use any motivational design support.

Two dependent variables include performance and attitude. Performance was efficiency score in motivational design obtained by the ratio of time spent on task to a product’s score. Participants’ products were graded by evaluators using a checklist. The second dependent variable of attitude was measured with the modified instructional material motivation survey administered online. In addition, two surveys that related to the RMO and MDA were conducted to measure participants’ reactions to them.

Math problem solving has been regarded as one of the major weaknesses in U.S. students’ math performance for many years (Orabuchi, 1992). One of the main reasons that students do not perform well in math problem solving may be due to math anxiety. There has been increasing interest in math education areas on how to reduce math anxiety to enhance students’ math performance. However, there were few empirical studies which examined the effects of various interventions towards decreasing math anxiety. Given the lack of empirical studies on how to reduce students’ math anxiety and to increase math learning, this study examined the effects of emotional support and cognitive motivational messages on math anxiety, self-efficacy, and math problem solving. This study built upon the work done by Shen (2009) by modifying elements of his design and stimulus materials and by introducing a new independent variable: incremental ability beliefs. Thus, two independent variables – one for decreasing affective math anxiety (emotional support) and another for alleviating cognitive math anxiety (cognitive motivational messages) were used in this study. The pedagogical agents were used as a delivering method of a computer based module in this study, but not an independent variable of this study.