Abstract

Higher education remains highly competitive. For many students, attending university is stressful. Helping students to learn successfully is also a tough task for instructors. Academic success is strongly influenced by the motivation to learn and in-class and class-related achievement. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to use Keller’s Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS) model as a basis for developing and designing instruction for an Information Technology and Society course that would improve college students’ motivation to learn and would promote their achievement. Participants were 220 technical and vocational college students from four Information Technology and Society classes and two teachers who taught these classes in southern Taiwan. Each teacher taught two classes, one experimental (ARCS) and one control (non-ARCS) class; assignment to the experimental and control groups was random. For the experimental class, teachers adopted Keller’s ARCS model of motivational design, and for the control class, they used a non-ARCS model. Data were collected using the Learning Motivation Inventory (LMI), which was developed by the researchers. Additionally, students’ midterm and final exam scores were collected. Our findings indicated that (a) there were no significant differences between students’ motivation to learn and achievement in the experimental group and the control groups; (b) instructor characteristics, student characteristics, amounts and levels of motivational instructional strategies, and properties of the course influenced motivation to learn; and (c) achievement goals and the importance of exams played important roles influencing achievement in this study.