Relationships among attitude, motivation, and interface design during a college on

Relationships among attitude, motivation, and interface design during a college on – line course

John W. Flor[1]

Texas Woman’s University

jflohr@twu.edu

Background

Music students using on – line courseware such as BlacboardTM do not always find the experience easy. Success with on – line learning depends on several factors including availability of computer hardware, dependability of on – line connections, interface of learning environment, and students’ prior computer experience (Horton, 2000; Kristof & Satran, 1995; Williiams & Tollett, 2000). Difficulties may also affect the students’ attitude and motivation becoming problems or roadblocks to a fruitful experience for students (Trollinger, 2001). For example, inadequate connection speed, computer hardware, computer software of limited accessibility to a computer can become frustrating and deleterious to the learning experience.

Purpose

The purpose of the study was to examine student attitude and motivation in relation to graphic interface design and functionality.

Method

The sample for this preliminary study was drawn from a music education methods class comprised of 11 graduate students who were teaching in a metropolitan school district. The course was divided into a night meeting every other week for 3 – 4 hours and Internet assignments between each class meeting. After two regular classroom meetings and two Internet assignment weeks, it was evident that the Internet part of the course was not running smoothly.

An open – ended essay was given to the students asking them “Please describe your successes and problems with Blackboard™.” A 42 – item questionnaire was developed from the open – ended essay. The questionnaire contained 12 reverse scored items. The Likert style questionnaire was divided into three sections and enabled students to respond SA – strongly agree, A – agree, D – disagree, and SD – strongly disagree. Section 1 was comprised of 3 questions about computer availability and characteristics. For example, “I have a computer readily available to me.” Section 2 contained questions about student motivation and attitude. For example, “I have found Blackboard™ useful.” Section 3 contained questions about the interface design and functionality. For example, “The navigational information on Blackboard™ is excellent” and “The discussion board was useful.” The questionnaire was distributed for anonymous completion according to human subjects protocol.

Results

The final sample included 9 subjects because 2 students did not complete the entire questionnaire and were deleted from the analysis. The students agreed they usually had a computer available (mean = 3.67 on five – point scale). Of the nine students, six used a 56K modem, I used a 28K modem, and 2 students used a DSL connection. All students used the WindowsTM operation system.

Reliability analysis of the internal consistency for the 42 – item questionnaire revealed a high Cronbach’s alpha of .88. All 42 items were loaded into a nonparametric correlation matrix. The resulting 42x42 correlation matrix was used to group the questions into meaningful subsets of attitude, motivation, interface, general, or miscellaneous. Those questions that were correlated at a .05 or lower level of significance were examined for commonalities. The 42 questions were placed into five categories: 9 attitude questions, 4 motivation questions, 17 interface questions, 3 general category type questions, and 9 miscellaneous questions.

A principle components factor analysis was initiated to determine the relationships among the questionnaire items and categories. Table 1 below contains four principle components.

As shown in Table 2, factor 1 indicated a relationship between the discussion board of Blackboard™ (variable 21 notated as V21, V24) and the attitude of the student. Factor 2 related to the interface design and functionality (e.g., V20, “The announcement page was useful”). Factor 3 related to the availability of Blackboard™ (e.g., V32, “I often found the Blackboard™ site unavailable). Factor 4 contained no high loadings. The higher loadings of factor 4 indicated a motivational component. The highest loading was on V14, “I am motivated to learn, regardless of how the information is presented to me.” A comparison of motivation and interface design items revealed a low .279 non – significant correlation (Table 3).

Discussion

Four factors emerged from the principal components factor analysis. The strongest relationships were found between attitude and the discussion board assignment on Blackboard™ (e.g., “The discussion board was useful.”). Correlation between attitude and the discussion board was moderately positive but not significant (Spearman r = .54). There was a higher correlation between attitude and interface than between motivation and interface (Table 3). Evidently, the Blackboard™ interface influenced the student attitude more than student motivation. The fourth factor included no variables loading at .7 or above. Students perceived their motivation to be largely unrelated to the Blackboard™ tasks. Variable 14, “I am motivated to learn, regardless of how the information is presented to me,” had a mean positive agreement of 3.56 on the four – point scale.

The data indicated that computer availability and adequate connections to the Internet were not responsible for difficulties with completing assignments on Blackboard™. It was student attitude that showed the strongest relationship to the assignments on a discussion board. Perhaps their attitude was also influenced by the amount of time they each had available. Long teaching days, prior Internet experience, and the fact that 85% of the subjects were novice teachers may be other variables to consider in future research. It is possible that some of the non – significant correlations were related to the low number of subjects (N=9) entered into the nonparametric statistical tests. Results indicated the efficacy of using the questionnaire with a larger sample to further test the relationships among the variables. Further research may furnish information on important aspects of instructional design.

[1] John W. Flohr, Professof of Music, Department of Performing Arts, Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John W. Flohr at the Department of Performing Arts, Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas 76204. Phone is (940) 898-2511 and fax (940) 898-2494.

Electronic mail may be sent to: jflohr@twu.edu.