A Model for Motivational Design - ARCS

A - Attention
R - Relevance
C - Confidence
S - Satisfaction

While most people see the need and the importance of adopting new technologies, many are still quite resistant to change. In the last eight months, many of our campus coordinators have been given administrative access to eCollege so that they can review and resolve their student issues more effectively. Yet, many of these coordinators still send student issues directly to my team to be analyzed and solved for them without ever having used their administrative access.

In a couple of weeks, I will be flying out to Tampa, Florida, to be a part of an online coordinator workshop, and I will be employing the ARCS model to try to break down some of this resistance. I believe that there are several factors that have contributed to the campus coordinators not fully employing the tools that they have. First, I am not sure that they understand the relevance of the new processes to them and how the changes will benefit their ability to provide support for their students. Second, they do not have the confidence with the new tools necessary to use the tools effectively. And lastly, they have not achieved the satisfaction of resolving student issues without assistance.

While I have some specific information and processes that I will be covering in the presentation, I will focus on the needs and expectations of the campus coordinators by doing the following.

Attention: I will begin by collecting a list of common student issues that they would like to know how to resolve themselves. What do they want to know how to do?

Relevance: The campus coordinators will be providing the issues and situations that they want to be able to resolve. There is a PowerPoint presentation that provides the same information, but it will have greater relevance, and act as a better resource, once they have used the tools for real issues that have meaning to them.

Confidence: If the campus coordinators understand what their administrative profiles enable them to accomplish, they will be more confident in using the tool effectively. I will provide a variety of scenarios and ask the coordinators to locate the information in eCollege themselves. I will have an active online computer available to demonstrate the different tools, and I will have the coordinators walk me through the screens to locate the information that they want to find.

Satisfaction: Confidence and satisfaction are acquired through doing. I expect these coordinators to be better trained, confident, and motivated to use their online eCollege access once the presentation is completed. I am certain that they will have a greater sense of satisfaction for their ability to resolve student issues themselves once the presentation is completed and they are using these tools in their daily activities.

Connectivism and Learning

How has your network changed the way you learn?

I am not certain that my network has changed the way that I learn so much as defines it. As my mind map reflects, my network is divided into specific categories: work, play, family, friends, learning, and teaching. These are the balance points of my life. There have always been people in my life who have held a greater degree of influence on my views of the world than others. It is to those people I turn to seek guidance and support. My father has taught me self-reliance, self-respect, and responsibility. My colleagues have taught me friendship, collaboration, and partnership. My husband has taught me trust, love, and communication. My children have taught me patience and the joy of play. My friends have taught me to understand and value difference and to find common values that make human interaction worthwhile, namely honor, integrity, and compassion.

Which digital tools best facilitate learning for you?

It is digital tools where I find the greatest changes in my life. I spend most of my day in front of a computer, such that I have grown adept at using all sorts of digital tools. I send and receive hundreds of emails daily through work. I interact with my online learning community here at Walden through email and in my online courses. I use MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint regularly. I conduct conference calls and use WebEx tools to conduct meetings. I find all of these tools help me frame my thoughts and better communicate with the people in my life. The process of writing and communicating helps facilitate my learning by forcing me to articulate and share my thoughts with others. Their responses reshape my own thoughts by helping me refine clarify them.

How do you learn new knowledge when you have questions?

The simplest answer: I ask the people whose opinions I value. I believe learning is an ongoing life process that is not restricted to a classroom. Opportunities for learning life lessons abound in my daily activities. However, I do find that continuing education is one way to focus my efforts while also validating that learning through the attaining of traditional degrees.

To -Ism Or Not To -Ism...

As I read through the blogs by Bill Kerr, Stephen Downes, and Karl Kapp, I was struck by the discussion related to different learning theories. Is there a single theory that addresses the way that people learn? As an educator, how can I adopt, or is it adapt, the theories that currently influence instructional designers in order to create an effective learning environment?

Do I need to reject theories? For example, Stephen Downes rejects the concept of behaviorism when he says, “it remains puzzling that so much of the instructional design community remains rooted in behaviorism - this more than 30 years after the theory was abandoned everywhere else.” He rejects the notion of human stimulus-response, which he considers a programmable behavior, and in Kerr's words a dehumanizing conceptualization of human understanding. Downes emphasizes that humans understand by using cognitive processes like recognition, inference, and association.

Do I need to meld theories? Karl Kapp suggests that “lower level learning (lower cognitive load) requires a behaviorist approach (memorize, recognizing, labeling) as does the expectation of outcomes that must be measured. I then suggest that procedural and rule-based learning requires an emphasis on Cognitivism and finally, problem-solving, collaboration and creativity require a view of Constructivism.”

Personally, I am not willing to reject behaviorism entirely. I think that there are some significant ideas that should be retained in its fundamental beliefs. Mastery learning is possible through carefully sequenced units of learning. Curriculum development should take into consideration behavioral objectives. I think there has been too much emphasis on stimulus-response concept; the concept is often misunderstood. For example, Skinner strongly suggested the importance of the learner being actively engaged in the learning process in order to ensure that learning has occurred. The theory is not just about stimulus-response. It is about measurable outcomes and mastery learning.

Cognitive learning theories provide a useful framework for understanding learning strategies appropriate to individualized instruction, since it recognizes the unique processing capabilities of each human through its concepts of short and long term memory, human processing of sensory information, cognitive stages of the learner, inquiry and discovery models. Cognitive sciences emphasis that learning takes place as internal mental processes of the individual. As a result, educational technologies that encourage student inquisitiveness, critical thinking, creativity, and problem solving are going to be of great import for the future.

Of all the comments on the blog site, I preferred the one by Miguel, “Learning theories seem to serve only insomuch as they help us get passionate about human learning and the possibility that we may be able to predict how people learn.” Bill Kerr poses an interesting question about -isms like constructivism, behaviorism, cognitivism, and connectivism, “Should we stick to -isms or should we cherry pick different useful ideas out of the various theories?” He suggests that learning theories do not stand still; instead, they evolve as theorists listen to the criticisms of others and adapt their theories accordingly. I find myself in agreement with Kerr when he claims that each -ism is “offering something useful without any of them being complete or stand alone in their own right.” There is indeed a lot to learn from ongoing discussions like this one. When we create a one-size-fits-all solution for the learning process, then it will be time once again to question everything we think we know.