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Motivating Factors in E-learning – A Case Study of UNITAR
Dr. Kamal Kishore Jain Associate Professor, Faculty of Business Administration University Tun Abdul Razak (UNITAR), Malaysia prof_kamal@yahoo.com Lee Bee Ngoh Senior Executive, HR Sunway City Berhad, Malaysia Posted: February 10, 2003 Student Affairs Online, vol. 4 no. 1 - Winter 2003 The
convergence of Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) has forced many
parties to harness the power of the Internet. The discipline of education has
witnessed the biggest impact of this breakthrough. The advancement of
information technology is already transforming the education industry in a
large scale worldwide. Higher learning institutions, such as colleges and
universities, are redefining the whole world as their marketplace. The term
E-learning has brought a new meaning to education. It has been touted as the
next wave in the evolution of learning. E-learning transcends typical time and
space barriers, allowing students to access learning opportunities day and
night from any part of the world. In higher institutions, E-learning is making
it possible for non-traditional students, those with families, full-time jobs
and all other kinds of responsibilities, to be a part of the knowledge economy.
Technology developments have raised hopes for millions to participate in the
“paper-less” society. It
is widely acknowledged that nontraditional students, i.e. working adults
returning to schools or students who are unable to attend classes on campus for
other reasons, make up a rapidly growing population in education today. In
order to keep students motivated, it is essential that we know their reasons
for choosing a particular mode of learning, in this case E-learning. Why would
an adult person like to pursue an advanced degree through E-learning mode? What
are the motivating factors in pursuing an advanced degree in E-learning mode?
Is it because of its low cost, instant scalability, geographical independence,
or something else? This paper attempts to answer these questions based on the
survey results obtained through a questionnaire from 71 students of the
university in masters’ level courses in management and IT (MBA, MITM, and
MIMT). It may be noted that this is an exploratory study with just a few cases
in one institution, and the data are not intended to be representative of any
specific population. Characteristics
of E-learners Much
of the research done on successful E-learners suggests that students who are
attracted to E-learning share certain characteristics, including that they are
voluntary seeking further education, are highly motivated, have high
expectations, are more self-disciplined, are
independent, are active learners, possess good organizational and time
management skills, and can adapt to new learning environments. They tend
to be older than the average student do and have a more serious attitude
towards their courses, education and learning.
They are working and need more flexible schedules. They are not
necessarily looking for campus-based educational and social opportunities. Consequently, they bring with them a
different set of assets and expectations to the learning process (Lyman, 1999;
Palloff & Pratt, 2001; Willis, 1993). According
to Nebraska Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy (“Assumptions about,”
2002, Introductory para), adult learners possess several characteristics. Adult learners are diverse, bringing a
wealth of life experiences to the learning situation. They (a) vary widely
among ages, abilities, job experiences, cultural backgrounds, and personal
goals; (b) range in educational backgrounds from no formal schooling through
many years of schooling; (c) carry well-developed personal identities; and (d)
carry reservoirs of personal experiences, which are learning resources. Adult
learners want to be able to relate content to specific contexts in their lives.
These contexts are often in the form of a problem, issue, or concern in their
worksite. These learners (a) tend to be pragmatic; (b) study to improve their performance
in other social roles; (c) let their schoolwork take a back seat to other
responsibilities, such as jobs and families; (d) expect their class time to be
well spent; and (e) hope their courses will help them solve problems in their
daily lives. Adult
learners prefer to have some degree of control over their learning. They may
evidence a greater or lesser degree of self-directedness depending upon their
maturity level and familiarity with the content. They (a) tend to be voluntary
learners; (b) believe the decision to return to school is an important one; and
(c) believe that education will be helpful. The
adults’ sense of self has a significant influence on the meaning of the
learning situation for that person. Learners have differing degrees of self-efficacy
and awareness of their own learning styles. They may (a) feel embarrassed about
returning to school; (b) feel embarrassed to join classes with younger
students; (c) hold negative impressions of their own abilities; and (d) hold
negative impressions of schools and teachers. In
general, E-learning has been applied to and seen as most successful in the
arena of adult and continuing education.
However, more universities are using this delivery method with all
groups of students regardless of age or level of educational experience. Internet-based
learning, if it is based on interactive approaches to learning in which
students are treated as co-discoverers of knowledge and asked to work in teams,
has the potential to capitalize on adult learners’ prior knowledge and
experiences in a way that traditional approaches have often failed to do. The
fact that most E-learners are adult learners is beyond question and this
characteristic has been witnessed in many virtual universities. Belt (2001,
para.3) compares the students population of Capella University and the
University of Phoenix Online and concludes that although Capella University
does not have an age requirement, most of its student population is 35-to-60
year-old mid-career professionals. At the University of Phoenix Online, there
is even a requirement for admission whereby a potential student must be 23
years old and employed with a full-time job.
Although the University of Phoenix has a traditional brick and mortar
campus, students enrolled in the University of Phoenix Online do not study at
the traditional campus – their education is offered completely on-line. As a
result, when many students graduate from these schools, they are not looking
for jobs because they already have them. Learning Styles
and E-learning There has been much research and rhetoric about the different
learning styles people have. Instructors are encouraged to design activities
and materials to accommodate all types of learning styles. Knowing which
learning style you have can be helpful in taking advantage of your natural
tendencies while trying to develop other ways of learning. Learning styles (Learning Styles and Approaches, 2002, para.1 and
2) are commonly divided into three main categories: visual (you learn best by
reading or observing), auditory (you learn best by hearing or listening), and
kinesthetic (you learn best by doing). It
has been theorized that people tend to learn predominantly through one of their
senses, i.e. auditory, visual or tactile. Auditory learners tend to retain what
they hear, visual learners tend to retain more of what they see and read, and
tactile learners tend to retain more when they are using their sense of touch.
Learning styles may be described as sets of conditions under which learners
prefer to work. For example, some learners may prefer (and learn more easily)
when information is presented via print rather than orally, or vice versa. Creating an E-learning course that is varied in its
approaches can help to motivate all students and keep them involved. For example, in addition to asking students
to read and engage in discussion online, if instructors use simulations, case
studies, Internet research and collaborative group experiences, they can help
broaden the learning experience and accommodate various learning styles. Litzinger
& Osif (1993) define learning styles as the ways in which children and
adults think and learn. They break down thinking and learning processes into
cognition - the ways in which people acquire knowledge; conceptualization – the
ways in which people process information; and motivation - which includes
decision-making styles, values and emotional preferences. Some students feel that online
classroom more closely supports their learning style than the face-to-face
classroom, particularly if they need time to think and reflect before
responding to questions and ideas (Palloff & Pratt, 2001; Hartman, 1995;
Lyman, 1999). Some may find that they express themselves more effectively in
writing than verbally. For them, the online environment may be more appropriate
because it is text-based. Several
attributes make a student successful online when he may not succeed in the
face-to-face classroom. The successful online students tend to enjoy learning
for learning sake. They become energized by the ability to be set free to
explore a topic with peers. They demonstrate good thinking skills, an ability
to work and do some amount of research independently, and an ability to work in
an unstructured environment. E-learning
can successfully draw out a student who would not be considered an active and
participative learner in the traditional classroom. It can provide an
educational experience that helps to motivate students who appear unmotivated
in another setting, because they are quieter than their peers and less likely
to enter into a discussion in the classroom. The
online classroom can provide an alternative that may be quite useful for some
students. However, all students must not force into online classroom because it
is not effective for all. Understanding different learning styles can help
illustrate why that is the case. Understanding
Motivating Factors Motivating
factors to take an advanced degree Large
numbers of adults seek educational experiences. While they do so for a variety
of reasons, certain motivational factors stand out. Reasons why adults pursue an advanced degree have remained fairly
consistent over recent decades. The top two reasons are (a) to gain work-related
knowledge and skills and (b) to gain personal development and fulfillment.
Adult students are often under pressure to get a degree due to external
expectations, i.e. to fulfill expectations or recommendations of their
employer, for personal advancement in order to achieve higher status in their
job, or to secure professional advancement and stay abreast with their
competitors. A growing number of positions require high skills and the
prospects become dimmer for people who have not acquired a degree if they are
aiming for responsible positions (Lyman, 1999; Teichler, 1996). Some students
may pursue an advanced degree due to their desire for lifelong education
(Helmfrid, 1996). We are entering an era when lifelong education is a necessity
for keeping up with developments within one’s own profession. In earlier times,
one could acquire the competence for lifelong professional work; now there is a
growing gap between the knowledge of any individual and the frontiers of
knowledge. The need for lifelong education is not just for professional reasons
but also to enrich a long life in retirement. Therefore, practically everybody
is going to undertake some higher education provided that there are the right
incentives and that suitable programs of study are offered. Adult
students may pursue an advanced degree out of the desire to acquire a special
skill to help them adapt in a rapidly changing global environment. One of the
chief characteristic of higher education is that it gives its recipients a
capacity to adapt to change. It will continue to be one of the few advantages
parents can give to their children in a rapidly changing world, and more and
more people will become aware of that (Trow, 1996). Motivating
Factors to Take an Advanced Degree in E-Learning Mode E-learning
has many motivating features that attract adults to pursue an advance degree
on-line instead of a traditional classroom. These motivating factors include
efficiency, low-cost, timeliness and dependability, and flexibility. E-learning also has the ability to reach an unlimited number of
people virtually simultaneously, to help develop work-related knowledge and skills, increase
communication, build a community that can be a tremendous motivator for group
learning, suit the rapid changing nature of knowledge, fulfill the need for geographic
independence. E-learning also can be
more exciting, fun,
and entertaining
than self-directed learning (McCormac
& Jones, 1998; Rosenberg, 2001; Collis & Meeuwsen,1999). Adult
learners are often so highly motivated that they may be characterised as
self-directed learners, clear in the educational goals and objectives they wish
to pursue. Internet-based learning has tremendous potential for saving time and
money as well as alleviating related problems of transportation, childcare and
lack of family support, which impeded them from pursuing adult education in the
past. Adult learners have increased motivation when they are given some freedom
to select media and learning activities. Adults registering for an on-line
course today experience long hours of work, family obligations and
uninterruptible career path. In general, students want learning that is
flexible, relevant to their work situation, current, personalized, portable,
focussed, timely, affordable and valued (Fletcher, 1991; Hall, 1997; Haziah
& Aziah, 1997). Empirical Research on Motivating Factors in E-Learning UNITAR
is the first virtual university of Malaysia. It offers more than 10 academic
programs in the fields of Business Administration, Information Technology and
Humanities and Social Sciences from first to doctorate degree level. UNITAR is
a virtual university where students and faculty members engage in learning and
teaching activities through the mixed use of face-to-face, online and
multimedia environments. UNITAR has adopted a blended model of delivering
education. It comprises of on line meetings with the students as well as a
limited face to face meetings with them. At UNITAR, students come for their FTF
classes only about four times in a semester of about four-month duration. There
are about four online classes for each course in a semester. A
comprehensive questionnaire on motivating factors in E-learning was designed to
obtain the views of students pursuing advanced degrees from University Tun
Abdul Razak (UNITAR). Approximately 300 students were registered in the January
2001 semester in a total of 3 master’s level courses (Master of Business
Administration, Master of Information and Multimedia Technology & Master of
Information Technology Management) at UNITAR. The questionnaires were sent
through e-mail to all students whose e-mail IDs were made available by the
academic affairs department. In all 159 questionnaires were e-mailed. Data were
collected from 71 students giving a response rate of 44.65. A greater number of
students in the MBA course responded to the questionnaire as they were reminded
by the authors in one of the face-to-face classes with them. The response rate
was lower from the students doing their MITM and MIMT courses as authors did
not have the opportunity to meet these students in their face-to-face class.
Thus, a major shortcoming of the research is that not all the programs are
equally represented in the study. A
brief profile of the 71 respondents is given in the Table 1. Table
1 Respondents’
Profile
Research
Findings The
respondents were asked to rate on a five point scale (1 being strongly disagree
and 5 being strongly agree) 20 items that were identified as possible factors
motivating student to participate in E-learning, based on the literature
review. A mean score, along with the standard deviation, of these 20 items
arranged in descending order is given in the Table 2. A higher the mean score
indicates higher agreement to that variable. The item “E-learning fulfils the need for increased flexibility”
represented the highest motivating factor, followed by the item “E-learning
fulfils the need for geographic independence.” “E-learning as a symbol
of higher status” was the lowest motivating factor, and other low factors
included cost and efficiency. Once
the mean score was obtained, the five top motivating factors were identified
and used for further analysis to see the relationship of those factors with the
age, gender, marital status, length of employment, and the program for which
registered at UNITAR. A chi-square test was conducted, for example, to test the
hypotheses if age and the variable with the top mean score (E-learning fulfils
the need for increased flexibility) is related. In all the above cases, the
Pearson Chi-Square gave asymptotic distribution value greater than 0.05, hence
no significant relationship was found between the five variables having the top
mean scores and age, gender, marital status, length of employment, and the
program of study. Table
2 Mean
Score of Motivating Factors
Conclusion People
join E-learning courses for a variety of reasons. The empirical research done
for this study reveals that the top five motivating factors in choosing an
E-learning course are as follows: (a) It fulfils the need for increased flexibility; (b) It fulfils the need for
geographical independence; (c) Web-based environment can potentially offer many
opportunities for enriching the learning process – can have the world at your
fingertips; (d) E-learning suits the rapidly changing nature of knowledge; and
(e) E-learning offers temporal independence (learning can be done anytime
convenient to the students). The study may help the providers of online
courses design their strategies and position their courses in line with the
above. Learning at your own time, pace, and space seems to be the most
appropriate positioning for such courses. It must be noted, however, that this
is only an exploratory study based on a small sample of respondents from one
university. Larger studies at other institutions should be conducted to help
validate the findings. References Assumptions
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