Discovering the Type of Motivation and Corresponding Regulatory Processes That Drives Asynchronous Online Discussion Activities

• Main Authors: Siew, Woei Ling, Chien, Sing Lee, Kee, Man Chuah, Ah, Choo Koo
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, UNIMAS 2012
• Subjects: AC Collections. Series. Collected works; L Education (General)
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/725/1/Discovering%2Bthe%2BType%2Bof%2BMotivation%2Band%2BCorresponding%2BRegulatory%2528abstract%2529.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/725/

Prior research has revealed that students have different attitudes towards online activities for learning, in our case, asynchronous online discussions (AOD). We have seen students participating due to either rewards given, their own learning purposes or just lurking around. The objective of this paper is to identify the students’ self-regulation processes while learning informally through surveys carried out using the Behavioural Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire. Through a series of case studies carried out from 2008 till 2011 on 402 participants, the findings revealed that identified regulation had the highest mean score while non-regulation received the lowest mean score. This implies that some students often viewed the AOD as providing some value and benefit to their learning. However, due to some reasons, some other students could not participate actively, even with the prospect of receiving rewards. It is thus important for an instructor to investigate the reasons instead of offering rewards to encourage active participation because too much reward can become detrimental to the intrinsic motivation of a student. It also becomes crucial for the instructor to develop scaffolds based on identified regulation processes, i.e. personal importance and conscious valuing. These scaffolds will eventually enable students to progress from a lower degree of self-determination or autonomy to intrinsically-motivated self-determination or autonomy