Teaching with Technology

One of the challenges for faculty teaching online is to understand what motivates their students. While studies have been done in traditional environments about why students might succeed or fail in their educational endeavors, not much has been done to analyze motivations and strategies among online learners. Successful learners must be motivated to learn and to become self-regulated learners.

Jennifer Richardson and Tim Newby chose to apply John Biggs’s Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) to online learners. The SPQ covers a matrix of six motivations and strategies with three student approaches to learning: surface, deep, and achieving. Each approach is linked to a motive and a learning strategy. For example, a student with a surface motive for learning just wants to get through the course, one with a deep motive is honestly interested in the material for its own sake, and a student with an achieving motive cares more about the grade than about learning. Each of these motives is aligned with an associated strategy that furthers those motives.

The authors used the SPQ on about 120 students, split close to evenly by sex, who were enrolled in graduate courses in either an engineering field or an education field. For more than half of the students, the course about which they were surveyed was not their first online course. The majority of the students were between 25 and 35 years old.

The results showed that students with more experience in online learning became more engaged in their own learning with their motives and strategies moving towards those of more mature learners who take more responsibility for their learning. No difference was noted for the sexes of the subjects. Of interest is that full-time students were more in grades than learning. Younger students, as expected, were more likely to use surface strategies than older students. The most interesting finding was that students in the engineering program were more likely to have surface motives and use surface strategies while education students tended toward deep strategies.

The overall conclusion of the study is that faculty engaged in teaching online should be more aware of the differences in engagement styles of their students and tailor the courses accordingly. Students enrolled in these programs would also benefit from assistance in understanding their motivations and how to improve their learning.

Richardson, J. C., & Newby, T. (2006). The Role of Students’ Cognitive Engagement in Online Learning. American Journal of Distance Education, 20(1), 23. doi:10.1207/s15389286ajde2001_3