Motivational development in times of campus closure: longitudinal trends in undergraduate students' need satisfaction and intrinsic learning motivation

Aims Higher education systems around the world have enforced campus closures to combat the COVID‐19 pandemic. Such measures may threaten students' basic psychological needs for relatedness, competence and autonomy, and the development of intrinsic learning motivation. Little is known about whether the implementation of campus closures yielded negative developmental patterns for these motivational variables. We aim to close this research gap. Sample We investigated developmental patterns in longitudinal data spanning the first four semesters of undergraduate students in two cohorts at one German university starting in 2013 and 2019 (cohort 1: normal study conditions; cohort 2: affected by campus closure). We used propensity score modelling to ensure comparability between both cohorts resulting in a sample of 435 students each (total n = 870 students). Method We estimated conditional latent growth curve models (LGCM) to investigate developmental trends in need satisfaction and intrinsic learning motivation across the students' first four semesters and how these trends differed between the two cohorts. Results The results indicated a more maladaptive development of motivational variables for students of cohort 2 compared to students of cohort 1. More specifically, we found negative developmental trends following the implementation of campus closures for competence, relatedness and intrinsic learning motivation. Conclusions Our findings highlight the importance of considering side effects for students' psychological functioning when discussing the implementation or renewal of campus closures. It seems important to find ways to carefully reopen higher education institutions while also minimizing further risks for students and faculty