P-+Motivation,+Engagement+&+Positive+Affect


 * ITEC 800 Fall 2008 – Mid-Term **

**Positive Affect >Motivation>Engagement**
Positive affect, motivation, and engagement all work in conjunction with each other. Before a learner will become engaged they must be motivated. Before they are motivated they must be in a positive affect state. Positive affect can be viewed as a precondition to motivation and motivation a precondition for engagement. Emotion, mood significantly impacts a person’s motivation and motivation is intregal to effective learning. Learners who are not motivated and engaged do not learn as effectively as their engaged and motivated peers. I am a person that is in touch with emotions – my emotions and other people’s emotions. I am an INFP on the Meyers-Briggs test. My world is ruled by my emotions. I make decisions based on how I feel. So you can see how the topic of emotion, feelings – positive affect – would interest me. The topic jumped out at me. **Definition and Description of The Theory and its Key Features** **Positive Affect** Affect is emotion, feeling. Positive affect is happiness, enjoyment, joy, excitement, interest. Affect theory is a branch of psychoanalysis that attempts to organize affects into discrete categories and connect each one with its typical response. So, for example, the affect of joy is observed through the reaction of smiling. This theory is attributed to Silvan Tomkins. Isen and Reeve’s assert that positive affect allows us to work easier. It facilitates creative thinking, efficient decision making and problem solving, and enhances performance.

Motivation refers to the process whereby goal directed behavior is instigated and sustained. (Schunk 1990). According to WordNet 3.0, motivation is “the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior " There are two kinds of motivation; intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is what comes from within a person, it is internal. Usually these are enjoyable tasks. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside a person, it is external. Usually these are work tasks.  Many studies have shown that intrinsically motivated students tend to persist longer, work harder, actively apply strategies, and retain key information more consistently.  **Engagement**  The American Heritage Dictionary definition of engagement is “to be actively committed.”  Driscoll says, “The results of past learning determines whether students will engage in new learning at some time in the future.  According to Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan) task engagenment produces positive affect when the task is able to satisfy a person’s needs for competence and autonomy. Again this shows how posive affect, motivation, and engagement work together. **Positive Affect** Think of a time when you were angry, depressed, or afraid. Maybe your boyfriend made you mad. Maybe you broke-up with your girlfriend. Maybe you were worried about changes at work. Being in a bad mood is not an ideal circumstance for learning. No matter how good the instructional strategy is a student who is in this state of mind will not have success learning. How can an angry person be expected to get motivated to learn? How can a person who is afraid be expected to become engaged in the lesson? Now think of a time when you felt happy, content, joyful, excited. Maybe your girlfriend or boyfriend proposed to you. Maybe you arrived to your own surprise party and all your friends were there. Maybe you passed all your finals and received A’s. If you analyzed yourself at those moments you would see that you were smiling, you were attentive, your senses were heightened, you listended closer. Does this sound like a description of the ideal state of mind to learn something? If you fell good about the learning, are happy about it you will want to do it. If something is painful or unpleasant, unappealing, or routine or boring or for any reason negative we don’t want to do it. Positive affect increases people’s interest in and enjoyment of moderately interesting activities. (Isen and Reeve) Positive affect influences motivation – positive affect fosters motivation for enjoyabletasks and less interesting work tasks also. (Isen and Reeve). **Motivation ** Specifically talking about motivation to learn. According to Drisoll, curiosity and interest, goals and goal orientation, and self-efficacy beliefs determine someone’s motivation for learning. Continuing motivation is due to the learners’ expectations being met and their opinion of their performance; if they were successful or not. **Positive Affect** I am experiencing negative affect when it come to this mid-term assignment. I have been worried and bored. On the other hand I am experiencing positive affect when it come to the final project assignment. I am excited and interested. The final project is important to me. It is a “labor of love.” According to Isen and Reeves, positive affect fosters responsible behavior to perform work tasks. Because I experience positive affect in general – I will balance enjoyable (intrinsic) tasks like my final project with “work that needs to be done” (extrinsic) like this mid-term assignment. This was a major finding of their experiments. **Motivation** When it comes to this assignment I have a complete lack of motivation. It is not my choosing, it is extrinsic, it offers no relevance. According to Self-Determination Theory people who are externally regulated show “low engagement, immature coping, and poor learning outcomes.” I feel that describes how I have been acting when it come to working on this assignment. My self-efficacy regarding this assignment is low. I feel trepedation as I begin the work. I haven’t written a term paper in 10 years maybe! I’m not at all confident that I can succeed. However, because I have succeeded in the past and with the assignments so far I still feel a glimmer of hope that I can do it. My final project, my book, I am extremely interested in and look forward to the work eventhough it is much more work. It is fun work to me. I am motivated to work on my final project for intrinsic reasons. I feel very confident regarding my ability to suceed with the final project. So why am I doing this assignment? My motivation is the need for achievement. I want to complete this class with a good grade. This assignment is a necessary step towards that achievement. **Engagement** I am not engaged. I want to procrastinate. (I never knew how dirty the fridge was until I had to get to work on this assignment!) It is very hard for me to get engaged in reading long-winded, convoluted articles about experiments with bags of candy and puzzles written with terminology that I don’t understand. Then writing a term paper about a subject that does not interest me. That by itself causes negative affect! It makes getting engaged in this assignment difficult for me. However, I am working on my final project as something else to do while I procrastinate doing my mid-term assignment! Theories regarding motivation are not strictly learning theories per se. However, learning theories and motivation theories influence each other to such an extent that they need to be considered together. Other learning theories are concerned with how we learn and how to teach to learn but they don’t explain WHY a learner will learn. That is what Motivation is concerned with. Motivation Process of learning is not specifically addressed. Modern approaches to motivation are consistent with a social cognitive view of learning. **Positive Affect** Isen and Reeve discuss the impact of positive affect on cognitive processes and behavior. “Positive affect facilitates flexible thinking and problem solving, and enhances performance, even where the tasks to be done are complex, difficult, and important which require motivation and sustained effort over time.” Neither Isen and Reeve’s paper regarding positive affect and emotion nor the paper //Affective Learning – A Manifesto// discuss how to induce positve affect in any real way. In Isen and Reeves experiments they “manipulate affect” by asking the subjects to pick a bag of candy as a gift. I don’t understand how that causes an honest positive affect that will continue for longer than a few minutes. Isen and Reeve’s experiments focus on how positive affect enhances motivation to perform enjoyable activities vs. work that needs to be done. Isen and Reeve’s experiments show that positive affect increases the inherent satisfaction they feel from the work. It does not discuss strategies to create positive affect. Motivation has been incorporated into the major learning theories. Behaviorism touches on motivation in regards to reinforcement. Step 2 in planning a program for Behavior change is determining the appropriate reinforcers. In a cognitive lesson plan as proposed by Gagne, step 1 is gaining attention. When designing a motivational strategy using the ARCS Model, step 1 is also Gain and Sustain Attention. In constructivism the ownership in learning leads to positive affect and motivation. Also in constructivism one of the conditions is a relevant learning environment. Step 2 in the ARCS Model is enhancing relevance Teachers/trainers are responsible for creating the conditions conducive for motivation, positive affect, as much as is possible. There are approaches and models that can increase success. Keller’s ARCS Model: Gain and Sustain Attention Enhancing Relevance Building confidence Generating satisfaction. Strategies for Stimulating Motivation Step 1. Analyze the Audience Step 2. Objectives Step 3. Strategy Step 4. Revise In her article, Success for All Learners Part IV: Providing Multiple Means of Engagement, Carol Seibert discusses the third Principle of Universal Design for Learning: Provide multiple means of engagement to connect learners to the “why” of learning, provide resources at appropriate levels of difficulty and challenge, and address learners’ diverse interests and learning preferences. She suggests environments that offer multiple means of engagement and connect learners to the curriculum. These are choice of content and tools, adjustable levels of challenge, choice of rewards, and choice of learning context. Motivation has been a focus of scientific investigation since the 1930’s and 40’s. Motivation with regards to learning has been a focus of study since the 1960’s and 70’s. In the 1990’s research into motivation focused on people’s motivation to achieve. However as Isen and Reeve say in their paper “until recently there has been little attention paid to the influence of positive affect on motivation.“ (To this point, it is interesting that Driscoll does not take positive affect into consideration at all when discussing motivation in Chapter 9 of //Psychology of Learning for Instruction.//) In //Affective Learning – A Manifesto// the authors say that the cognitivist use of the computer as the metaphor for the way we learn has not taken into account the role of affect in learning. They go on to say that scientific understanding of the role of affect in learning is in it’s infancy. I’m glad that I chose this topic. From this class it is probably the one of the main things I have learned and will incorporate into any plan I have for instructional design. Consider motivation, how to create positive affect, and engage the learners. **Resources** Driscoll, Marcy P., //Psychology of Learning for Instruction,// 3rd Edition, Perason education, Inc. 2005. Isen, Alice M., Reeve, Johnmarshall, //The Influence of Positive Affect on Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: Facilitating Enjoyment of Play, responsible Work Behavior, and Self-Control.// Motivation and Emotion, Vol 29, No. 4, December 2005. Picard, Rw, et al... //Affective Learning - A Manifesto.// BT Technology Journal, Vol 22, No 4, October 2004.
 * Motivation **
 * How the Theory Operates **
 * The Theory in Action **
 * The Theory’s Application to Instruction **
 * Motivation **
 * Engagement**