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.