This research targeted the learning preferences, goals and motivations, achievements, challenges, and possibilities for life change of self-directed online learners enrolled in a massive open online course (MOOC) related to online teaching hosted by Blackboard using CourseSites. Data collection included a 40-item survey, of which 159 MOOC…

This is the second in a series of six papers from the Center on Education Policy exploring issues related to students' motivation to learn. As noted in the first paper of this series, motivation to learn is one of the most important factors in a student's educational journey, but a robust discussion about students' motivation may be the "missing…

The self-regulation of motivation represents a key feature of self-regulated learning. Recent studies have documented that students use a variety of strategies to sustain their learning motivation and that most of these strategies have positive effects. However, less is known about how students integrate the various motivational strategies into an…

Although there is some evidence in the vague literature available to indicate that African Americans are underrepresented in foreign language studies, this issue has never been investigated with a focus on Spanish. Six hundred and thirty-one students enrolled in high school Spanish in a racially diverse school district in West Texas were surveyed…

With the rapid growth in online programs come concerns about how best to support student learning in this segment of the university population. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of effort regulation, a self-regulatory skill, and intrinsic motivation on online graduate students' levels of academic procrastination, behavior…

While consensus exists about the critical role of learners’ motivation in second language acquisition, controlled investigations of the effects of teachers’ motivational strategies are limited. The research reported here used a quasi-experimental design to assess the effects of motivational strategies used by Saudi English as a foreign language…

This paper seeks to raise awareness of culturally sensitive teaching that is largely overlooked in the IS teaching community. In a global, networked environment commonly faced by the contemporary business or academic world, it is imperative to prepare future IT professionals with adequate cultural understanding of such a multicultural environment…

By understanding what motivates students to learn mathematics, instructors can adapt their teaching strategies to help students achieve a level of engagement conducive to learning mathematics. There is a substantial body of research on motivations and academic achievement at the elementary and high school levels, but less is known at the college…

Research on motivation has mainly concentrated on the role of goal orientation and self-evaluation in conducting learning activities. In this paper, we examine the relative importance of teachers' teaching and their efficacy beliefs to explain variation in student motivation. Questionnaires were used to measure the well-being, academic…

This is the last in a series of six papers by the Center on Education Policy exploring issues related to students' motivation to learn. This paper explores ways in which schools, teachers, and communities are using nontraditional methods to try to motivate students who don't respond to more traditional strategies. The paper focuses on three such…

This study examined the motivation to learn English of Indonesian junior high school pupils, 13-14 years of age, in three distinct contexts: a metropolitan city, a provincial town, and a rural district. Utilizing Dornyei's second language (L2) Motivational Self System as the theoretical framework, this study employed a 50-item questionnaire to…

Today's societies strive toward not leaving any children behind in their educational systems. Efficacy of educational inputs and processes is of paramount importance in today's education. Research studies can provide essential input in efforts toward attaining such efficacy. Thus, the purpose of this study was to test if high school students'…

This paper describes an instructional development effort to create effective and compelling instruction for eCommerce students. Results from a small field study inform the development project. Four high school students in an eCommerce course completed the standalone tutorial developed to teach them how to create a web page in the HyperText Markup…

Design and technology education provides children with opportunities to create solutions to specific needs in innovative ways. This paper reports on research that focused on the language that the children used when they were involved in a design and technology activity. In accessing the results of the language study, the findings suggest that the…

Teaching and learning is undergoing a dramatic change due to the advancement in telecommunication and IT. Increasingly, online learning platform is playing an important role higher education. The maturity of Internet and emergence of various cloud services catalyse the development of these platforms and student learning behaviour. An example is…