Malone and Lepper, (1987) explained seven factors that affect intrinsic motivation. The seven theories are categorized in to two major parts: individual motivation and interpersonal motivation. Individual motivation includes, challenge, curiosity, control and fantasy. The interpersonal motivation comprises three parts, namely cooperation, competition and recognition. Detailed explanation of the seven parts is reported by Malone and Lepper. I have modified it into five major components considering the teaching and learning process in medical statistics in the department of LIME, at Karolinska Institutet (KI).
The concept is described as the 5 C’s. I believe the team based learning (TBL) course partly addresses some of the problems related to student engagement and motivation.
In medical statistics unit, I have seen students are motivated in learning statistics
- when
they are working towards personally meaningful goals. The key here is that the
goals must be personally meaningful and challenging (challenge). Pre-reading and individual readiness test in team based
learning (TBL) course.
- when
they are exploring the discrepancy between their present knowledge or skills
and what could be achieved and are eager to learn something exciting or
attractive (curiosity). Individual and
team readiness tests in TBL courses and self-assessments in the hybrid courses
may help here.
- when
they can compare their own performance from the inception to the end (comparison). Team readiness tests and
Application exercises in the TBL course may be a good example.
- when
they can feel satisfaction from helping others. Participation in team work
requiring thoughtful answers increases significantly when students know that
their answer will be shared with other learners (cooperation)
- when
they can control what happens during the learning process (example, application
exercises in TBL). And that means more than simply allowing them to click on
the next button (control).
