Judy: Have you finished your assignment yet Nick?
Nick: No
Judy: Why not?
Nick: I guess I lacked the motivation to finish it.
Does this sort of conversation take place between your learners?
What is Motivation?
In a few words, motivation is what learners WANT to do, CHOOSE to do, and COMMIT to do.
Motivation is the WHY that makes learners do what they want to do.
It is the WHY that makes learners choose an object or a goal over another.
As an eLearning designer, you want your learners to be motivated about taking your training programme and keep alive the motivation throughout the course.
Why is Motivation Important in Learning?
Go back to the time you were in school.
There was always a subject you found more engrossing than the others.
We had a teacher who used to read a Shakespeare play every term, he read them himself, rather get the class to read them, and he acted them as well himself. Out of that class of thirty-two boys, I’ll bet they all remember the stories of those plays to this day.
Everybody was eager to attend his classes, and he had the most passes in state examinations.
Unfortunately, motivation is hard to achieve if you cannot address the WHY of the learner.
To compound matters, adult learners usually lack the desire to engage in learning.
The curious child of yesterday . . . the one who never stopped asking questions and wanted to explore and find out for himself . . . grows up to become a sceptic adult, uninterested in learning new skills and loathe to implement newly acquired knowledge in practical scenarios.