Ubiquitous technologies support being able to learn everywhere, anytime. Being used to learning in a classroom and having a lot of extrinsic motivation, I myself find it quit difficult to find the intrinsic motivation for learning. I can only imagine I am not the only one. My hypothesis is that for learning outside of the standard classroom, students need a larger amount of intrinsic motivation.

In my last job, we were creating online content using a ubiquitous e-learning tool (A New Spring), and we noticed it was hard keeping students from quitting half way. We used an adaptive memo-trainer, asking students to practice every day for 5 minutes. Still, usually only 20% of students finished a course.

Mayer suggests motivation is increased by interest, self-efficacy, casual attribution and goal orientation (Mayer, 2008). In a classroom situation, the teacher can add extrinsic motivation, simply because your homework is required and will be checked. Or, because you don’t want to look like a fool around your classmates for not knowing any answers. I can imagine ubiquitous technologies should focus on increasing intrinsic motivation. For example by seducing students with interesting content, micro-learning and setting straight goals. Furthermore, they should focus on increasing extrinsic motivation by requiring students to finish certain tasks, or by social control when doing collaborative work.

I loved the ideas in the video of this course about transperancy and surveillence. It would be nice to be able to constantly monitor students progression by asking them to work together on projects, in documents saved in the cloud. Perhaps there is another advantage of this, besides adding extrensic motivation. When students from a young age are able to get feedback on there work any given moment instead of only on the finished product, the fear to make mistakes would also be reduced. How do you think we can make sure students stay motivated when learning outside of the classroom?

Interesting video about this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVKEVXX32GQ

Reference:

Mayer, A.P. (2008) Expanding opportunities for high academic achievement: An international baccalaureate diploma program in an urban high school. Journal of advanced academics, 19(2), 202-235.