Building a Motivating and Autonomy Environment to Support Adaptive Learning

This Innovative Practice Full paper presents an effort on fostering student motivation and autonomy in support of adaptive learning. Higher education has been transformed by digital technology to be more interactive, self-paced, and adaptive to students. But this technology presupposes that students possess autonomy and are innately well motivated. Unfortunately, many students entering college lack motivation and self-control. These dispositions retard self-paced adaptive learning and limit the effectiveness of imparting improved adaptability in this technology. Taking inspiration from the self-determination theory, we investigated, in the context of adaptive learning, the importance of nurturing student autonomy and enhancing student situated motivation. In this paper, we present our experiential study in a gateway core course of computer science, in which adaptive preparation and learning pedagogy has been adopted for four semesters, one semester without motivating support and others with this support. By comparing and analyzing student engagement and performance over these four semesters, we observe that nurturing student autonomy and enhancing motivation are critical factors in maximizing the effectiveness of adaptive learning.