STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION AND ITS CHANGES AS THE COURSE PROGRESSES

Increasingly universities use educational tools within their learning systems. It is assumed that the provision of these tools would stimulate self-regulated learning. There are studies which show students are different regarding tool use but they compared tool use regarding age and gender. We investigated students’ motivation which affects the amount of tool use in a real classroom. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was run three times in an undergraduate course at a leading University in New Zealand to explore students’ self-reports on their motivation and use of learning strategies. A group of 188 students participated in the questionnaire to explore how students’ motivation changed as the course progressed. Our preliminary analysis showed that students motivation levels increased and decrease at different points in the course. The trend for students’ use of strategies such as rehearsal, elaboration, metacognitive self-regulation, and critical thinking increased, but their organizational strategies decreased