Keynote: Motivation in CSCL

TITLE OF PAPER: CSCL Symposium
PRESENTED BY: Sanna Jarvela, keynote

CONFERENCE: CSCL Symposium
DATE: October, 9th, 2004
LOCATION: EPFL, CRAFT


REAL-TIME NOTES / ANNOTATIONS OF THE PAPER:
-Sanna jarvela, University of Oulu, Finland-
Motivation in CSCL: What type of context does CSCL provide for student motivation and learning?

Why do we need motivation? Becose we have only few research in motivation. There are some naive beliefs of motivation in technology based learning. Thbeories of motivation focus on individual psychological phenomena. There are not appropriate methods available.

How motivation should be investigated? The questions about the impact of technology on student motivation have not yet been clearly formulated. We need more specific elaborations about the learning process.

The existing research on CSCL raises several questions: What type of motivation are present in the computer supported learning environment and how are these addressed?

What are the possible motivational expectations? -openess of choice; -more space for individual activities; -autonomy and sense of personal control; -contributions from pedagogical ideas; -student interest.

What do we mean about motivation in theory? Goals as cognitive representations of what students are trying to attain.

Socio-emotional interpretations are at the crossroad of this framework.

The notion of contextual motivation is a useful grounding.
Empirical findings: -non task oriented students had two kinds of motivational tendencies; progressive and regressive motivational coping.

At the beginning ot the learning project self-driven emotions play an important role.

Technology created a socially shared object which facilitates joint task-oriented work between the students.

Motivation in collaborative learning has not been specified: Group members should be motivated to share their ideas (Levine et. al., 2003). The emotional dynamics of collaboration is important (thomson & fine, 2004)

What makes students engaged in collaborative activities? How the circumstances for potential collaboration are made more optimal?

A game environment was created in order to create spaces for collaboration and increase awareness of social processes: eScape, the virtual game!

Working with technology can teach students more advances learning strategies such as social knowledge building strategies.

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