Smart Phone Learning: Where Does the Motivation Come from
By: ALI HUSSAIN ALI- English department
In our electronically connected world, mobile learning has firmly founded within the educational process across various stages and types, occupying vast spaces. Studies attribute the success of this new educational paradigm to its ability to motivate learners to actively participate and develop their internal drive, leading to greater knowledge acquisition, but how do we explain this motivation and stimulation in mobile learning? To start from this point and to prevent conceptual confusion, we need to clarify the terms in the educational process. What is a stimulus? What is motivation? And what is the difference between them?
The most common definition of motivation suggests it means moving forward; it is any signal (spoken or acted upon) that prompts a person towards better behavior or sustains such behavior. On the other hand, motivation is the learner’s desire to achieve a certain goal or perform a specific behavior. Thus, motivation creates and nourishes the drive, and motivation comes from the outside, while the drive comes from within the learner. This aligns with the interpretation found in (Lisan al-Arab), where it states that “حفزHafaza” means pushing something from behind, driving it forward, and “,دفعDafi’a” means a person is driven when deeply involved in something. This implies that motivation and drive are fundamental to building the learner’s new educational experiences, and self-directed exploration is the cornerstone of theories of motivation and drive. Education occurs through intricate interactions that cannot be separated between cognitive and motivational variables. Studies have shown that a learner-focused environment produces better performance and more self-directed motivational guidance, thereby enhancing the desire to learn and acquire knowledge (Rau, Gao, and Wu, 2008).
Educational paradigms have unanimously placed motivation and drive at the top of their priorities, but success in achieving them has varied across these paradigms. Smart phone learning—based on multimedia using portable electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets—has been identified by studies as the leading approach in this field. Furió (2014) confirmed this fact in a study conducted with his research team, comparing traditional education and mobile learning through an experiment involving two groups of students. The first group (experimental) learned through mobile devices, while the second group (control) learned the same educational content under the same conditions but with traditional education. The results showed that both groups achieved learning, but the knowledge gained was greater in mobile learning, and the motivation was achieved using iPhones, which served as an incentive and received the highest satisfaction rate in the student survey (Furió et al., 2014). Similarly, Hwang et al. (2016) reviewed studies on mobile learning from 2008 to 2012 and found that the reason for the widespread adoption of this educational model is its success in supporting student achievement and stimulating their motivation. The issue of mobile learning’s superiority in motivation and drive has sparked researchers’ interest, leading to various studies attempting to identify and frame the reasons for this superiority theoretically. I reviewed seventeen academic papers and studies that delved into this phenomenon and found that researchers have taken two main directions (Shawky Alrassoul, 2018):
The first direction: It attempts to explain it in light of the physical characteristics of mobile devices, discussing weight, size, internet connectivity, individual privacy, distance learning, and portability (Rikala, 2013). Huang et al. (2016) add that mobile learning is not confined to the traditional classroom; it is a flexible educational process where learning can take place anytime and anywhere, with additional benefits such as social interaction, individual privacy, and easy mobility.
The second direction: It involves researchers focusing on the design of the educational content itself by analyzing this content and its design in light of existing motivational and incentive theories and trying to adapt these theories to fit. This practice is common in modern sciences and does not diminish the researcher’s contribution. One of the most significant attempts in this direction is a case study conducted by researcher Ciampa (2013), which concluded that motivation and drive in mobile learning and gamification theory can be explained through a classification known as Malone & Lepper’s Taxonomy of Intrinsic Motivations (Malone & Lepper, 1987). The researcher states that this classification is the most suitable theory for framing motivation in mobile learning because it deeply analyzes the motivational indicators therein. But how did the researcher prove this hypothesis?
Ciampa designed a case study executed with the help of an academic team on a sixth-grade class at an elementary school in southern Canada. The class consisted of 24 students, 10 of whom were provided with tablets. The research team enlisted the class teacher, trained her in observation, and created a journal for her to record her observations and everything related to the study, closely monitoring the study’s progress.
After the study period of five months, the researcher conducted individual interviews with the ten students, asking them about their learning methods using the tablet and what motivated and stimulated them during learning. The results, based on observations and interviews, aligned with Malone & Lepper’s Taxonomy of Intrinsic Motivations. The researcher began the study’s text with two quotes from personal interviews to support her hypothesis. The first quote was from a student who said that he was used to loud shouting in the classroom, but with the start of using tablets, things changed, and the classroom became quiet because they captured the students’ attention. The second quote was from the teacher who said her students were enthusiastic and enjoyed using tablets and applications with high motivation because they stayed on task.
Malone & Lepper’s (1987) taxonomy of intrinsic motivations is a theory that states learners engage in an activity due to intrinsic motivations that make them interested and enjoy the activity, as well as extrinsic motivations that make them aspire to achieve results and gain rewards (Snow & Farr, 1987). This theory classifies motivations into six categories under two sections: three intrinsic motivations—challenge, curiosity, and control—and three extrinsic motivations—recognition, cooperation, and competition. The following discusses the case study results achieved by Ciampa (2013) in light of this classification.
