INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

DEFINITION: Motivation is the reason for people's actions, desires, and needs. Motivation is also one's direction to behavior, or what causes a person to want to repeat a behavior. An individual is not motivated by another individual. Motivation comes from within the individual.[dubious – discuss] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation

Intrinsic motivation refers to behavior that is driven by internal rewards. In other words, the motivation to engage in a behavior arises from within the individual because it is naturally satisfying to you. This contrasts with extrinsic motivation, which involves engaging in a behavior in order to earn external rewards or avoid punishment.

Working in classrooms and with groups, I have come across the fact that these people are there for a reason, either they are willingly to be there, or they had no choice. With both you have to work hard on keeping the public interested, why is this? Because even when they decided to be there, you have to work to meet their expectations and this is where Intrinsic motivation occurs because it is that time when they act without any obvious external rewards. We can say that they can simply enjoy the activity or see it as an opportunity to explore, learn, and improve their potentials. Well these rewards involve creating positive emotions within the environment and individuals you are working with. They are there and you have to keep them up on their toes for them to continue to be hooked on what they are willing to learn.

Now on the other hand, if you provide too much motivation, then they lose interest on whatever they are doing and do it not for the fact that they are learning something but now they go after the reward. There is a very fine line between motivation and reward, we might also lose our public interests if we go over any of these two. I would like to share this link with you, regarding out topic. "Making Learning Fun: A Taxonomy of Intrinsic Motivations for Learning," authors Thomas Malone and Mark Leeper suggest that this does not need to be the case. They identify several different ways to make learning environments that are intrinsically rewarding. Now they suggest using other words instead of fun, interesting, captivating, enjoyable, etc. People feel naturally motivated when we use Challenge, Curiosity, Control, Cooperation and competition, Recognition, since they create a more natural sense of competition and make learning a lot more CHALLENGING, which is a characteristic that is more likely to be developed in the classroom, rather than what they are used to see or experience at home or in their comfortable space. Please consider on reading the book above, it gives awesome tips and suggestions to engage students in your activities.

LINK FOR THE BOOK: http://ocw.metu.edu.tr/pluginfile.php/2340/mod_resource/content/0/ceit706/week3/MakingLearningFun-ATaxonomyOfIntrinsicMotivationsForLearning.pdf

SOURCES:

https://www.verywellmind.com/differences-between-extrinsic-and-intrinsic-motivation-2795384