Influences that undermine learners' perceptions of autonomy, competence and relatedness in an online context

• Published in: Australasian Journal of Educational Technology Vol. 31; no. 1; pp. 86 - 99
• Main Author: Hartnett, Maggie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education 01-01-2015
• Subjects: Academic Persistence; Autonomy; Case Studies; Competence; Context Effect; Feedback (Response); Foreign Countries; Guidelines; Influences; Learning Theories; New Zealand; Online Courses; Online learning; Personal Autonomy; Postsecondary education; Preservice teacher education; Preservice Teachers; Primary school teachers; Psychological Needs; Qualitative Research; Self Determination; Semi Structured Interviews; Social Influences; Student Attitudes; Student Motivation; Student perceptions; Student teachers; Teacher Education Programs; Teacher Student Relationship; New Zealand
• ISSN: 1449-5554; 1449-3098; 1449-5554
• DOI: 10.14742/ajet.1526

Online learning has grown considerably in recent years. However attrition rates from online courses indicate that not all learners are successful in such settings, and various factors have been identified as crucial to learner persistence. Research evidence suggests that motivation is one such factor. This study builds on previous studies by using self-determination theory (SDT) as an analytical framework to explore, in-depth, the motivation of pre-service teachers (preparing to teach at primary schools) at a New Zealand tertiary institution situated within an online learning context. In particular, the underlying concepts of autonomy, competence and relatedness from SDT were adopted as critical lenses to identify social and contextual influences which undermined the psychological needs of these learners. Most prominent among these in the current study were: high workload, assessment pressure, perceptions that the learning activity lacked relevance (autonomy-undermining), unclear and complicated guidelines, insufficient guidance and feedback from the instructor (competence-undermining), and communication issues with peers (relatedness-undermining). By not exclusively focusing on learners' autonomy needs as others have done, the article offers a more extensive picture of undermining influences on motivation than has been previously identified in online studies. [Author abstract, ed]