Herman, G. L., & Somerville, M. H., & Goldberg, D. E., & Green, K. A. (2012, June), Creating Low-cost Intrinsic Motivation Course Conversions in a Large Required Engineering Course   Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--21115

\bibitem{asee_peer_21115}
  Herman, G. L., \& Somerville, M. H., \& Goldberg, D. E., \& Green, K. A. (2012, June), \emph{Creating Low-cost Intrinsic Motivation Course Conversions in a Large Required Engineering Course }
  Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, San Antonio, Texas.
  10.18260/1-2--21115

Geoffrey L. Herman, Mark H. Somerville, David E. Goldberg, and Kerri Ann Green.  "Creating Low-cost Intrinsic Motivation Course Conversions in a Large Required Engineering Course ".  2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas, 2012, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2012.  https://peer.asee.org/21115 Internet.  19 Jan, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_21115}
  Geoffrey L. Herman, Mark H. Somerville, David E. Goldberg, and Kerri Ann Green.
  "Creating Low-cost Intrinsic Motivation Course Conversions in a Large Required Engineering Course ".
  \emph{2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, San Antonio, Texas, 2012, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2012.
  https://peer.asee.org/21115 Internet.  19 Jan, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_21115
author = "Geoffrey L. Herman, Mark H. Somerville, David E. Goldberg, and Kerri Ann Green"
title = "Creating Low-cost Intrinsic Motivation Course Conversions in a Large Required Engineering Course "
booktitle = "2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2012"
month = "June"
address = "San Antonio, Texas"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/21115}
number = {10.18260/1-2--21115}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -               Promoting Students’ Intrinsic Motivation in the Lecture/Discussion ClassroomDespite major investments in the development of innovative education reform, many instructors are stillslow to adopt these innovations because of unsupportive reward structures and significant timeinvestments for training. Embedded within these innovations, though, has been a growing awareness ofthe importance of students’ motivation and engagement in the learning process. In light of theseimpediments and the importance of students’ motivation, we have designed an experimental coursethat aims to shift the focus of education reform from training and changing faculty to focus onpromoting students’ intrinsic motivation to learn and using their motivation as the engine forsustainable, low-cost reform.This “intrinsic motivation” (IM) course was developed by following principles from self-determinationtheory (SDT) and by minimizing time and energy costs to the faculty. In SDT, IM can be promoted byincreasing a person’s sense of autonomy, mastery, purpose, and relatedness. From the outside, the IMcourse looks like a traditional lecture/discussion course with two lectures per week taught by the facultymember and a discussion section led once per week by a graduate teaching assistant (TA). We havechanged two of the discussion sections so that they focus on promoting students’ intrinsic motivation tolearn. We believe that this strategic change can be effective and sustainable, because it reduces thecost to the faculty, it can be easily scaled within the common lecture/discussion format at many largerresearch institutions, and it mobilizes students to be agents of change.Within these IM discussion sections, students are organized into learning teams (relatedness). Over thecourse of the semester, these learning teams negotiate a series of purpose-based learning agreementswith the TA. Through this series of contracts, these groups are given progressively greater autonomy indeciding what, how, and why they will study. For example, in the first learning agreement of a digitallogic course, the students are given a list of required and elective topics as well as a list of acceptablemastery options from which to choose. In the final learning agreement, the students are told to studyany computer architecture they choose as long as they can demonstrate their mastery of thatarchitecture.To understand how students’ motivation changes in response to instruction, we have administered theSituational Motivation Scale (SIMS) periodically throughout the semester. To describe the dynamics ofthe TA-student interactions, one of the authors has conducted weekly in-class observations of the IMsections. Finally, the students’ learning gains in the different sections are compared with results fromadministrations of the Digital Logic Concept Inventory.Preliminary analysis of this data suggests that students are initially fearful of this new learning paradigm.However, when students begin to grasp the possibilities and goals of this new learning environment,they begin to pursue innovative learning tasks that both challenge them to learn and motivate them tocontinue learning. We present some of these innovative learning tasks and show how students’motivation changes over the course of the semester.
AU  - Geoffrey L. Herman
AU  - Mark H. Somerville
AU  - David E. Goldberg
AU  - Kerri Ann Green
CY  - San Antonio, Texas
DA  - 2012/06/10
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Creating Low-cost Intrinsic Motivation Course Conversions in a Large Required Engineering Course 
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/21115
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--21115
ER  -