The impact of using breakout rooms on students' experience of social relatedness and intrinsic motivation in online classes

Maintaining students' intrinsic motivation in online teaching can be challenging, as many typical opportunities for interaction among students are not available in this setting. To date, little is known about how learning environments in online classes should be designed to help satisfy students' psychological need for social relatedness and thereby promote their intrinsic motivation. This study investigated the impact of using breakout rooms in group discussions on students' experience of relatedness and intrinsic motivation. An experimental study with undergraduate students (N = 108) showed that the use of breakout rooms during group discussions resulted in higher satisfaction of students' need for social relatedness and higher intrinsic motivation compared to using plenary discussions. As expected, the positive effect of the use of breakout rooms on students' intrinsic motivation was partially mediated by the satisfaction of students' need for social relatedness. Practical implications, as well as limitations of the study, are discussed.