Intrinsic Motivations for Learning

Intrinsic Motivations for Learning

1. Challenge

   • Should provide an optimal level of difficulty
     • Lack of success = lack of interest
   • Clear, fixed goals
   • OR
   • goals generated by the player
   • Proximal Goals
     • Near goals
     • Provide sustained motivation
   • Distal Goals
     • Distant Goals
   • Uncertain Outcomes
     • Goal attainment must be uncertain
     • Created by
       • Difficulty levels
       • Multiple levels of goals
       • Hidden information, selectively revealed
       • Randomness
   • Performance Feedback
     • Should be...
       • Frequent
       • Clear
       • Constructive
       • Encouraging
   • Self-Esteem
     • The activity should employ...
       • graded difficulty levels
       • positive feedback techniques
       • to promote feelings of competence!
     • The activity may employ personally meaningful goals that have...
       • Instrumental relevance
         • What they learn may help them in the future
           • Knowing how to fix a broken down car
       • Fantasy relevance
         • Embed material in meaningful context
       • Social relevance
         • A way people are more likely to enjoy

2. Curiosity

   • Sensory curiosity
     • Enhanced by audio + visual effects
   • Cognitive curiosity
     • Triggered by incomplete knowldege
       • People desire completeness and parsimony!
   • Both challenge and curiosity require an optimal level
     • Difficulty in one case
     • Complexity in the other

3. Fantasy

   • Evokes mental images of situations that are not actually present
     • Identification with imagined characters/contexts
   • Should appeal to the emotional needs of the learner
   • War
   • Destruction
   • Competition
   • Should provide appropriate metaphors for the materials presented for learning
     • Flight simulators for pilots
   • Exogenous relationship
     • Arbitrary relationship between fantasy and what is being taught
   • Endogenous relationship
     • The content cannot be changed

4. Control

   • Activity should promote feelings of control for the learner
   • Contingency
     • Feedback as a result of learner's success or failures
   • Choice
     • Choice over aspects of learning environment
       • Which task to undertake
       • How difficult a goal should be
     • Personalization of the activity
     • Perception of control vs. actual control
       • Forgetting the story is pre-determined
     • However, too much choice is a negative thing