Ask a Researcher: Motivation and Education Technology

Another question in my Ask a Researcher series:

This leads me to a question I wanted to ask you about the role of student motivation in measuring the successful implementation of OERs. When Sal Khan was at my school a couple of weeks ago, he met with teachers and I asked Sal Khan how his platform promotes motivation when students get stuck or lose interest. He indicated that the issue of motivation was a problem his team is constantly thinking about. Have you looked into the role of student motivation plays into the success of Wikis?

I have done some examination of motivation: more with anthropological methods (interviews and classroom observations) than with statistical methods (surveys and content analysis).
In any discussion of motivation, I think that Edward Deci and Richard Ryan's Self Determination Theory is the best place to start. SDT posits that internal motivation, the most powerful form of motivation, is a function of Competence, Autonomy, and Relationships. When people do stuff which is challenging but builds on existing skill sets (Competence), when they have choice about product or process (Autonomy), and when they work with people they care about (Relationships), they feel motivated.
My sense (more hunch than confirmed finding) is that school-based wiki work can touch on all three of these dimensions. Many students feel a competence with technology (especially in relation to their teachers), many wiki-based assignments offer dimensions of choice and ownership, and working in a public space can tap into students' relationship with peers and faculty. Two quotations from my research jump out here: An eighth grade girl once told me, of doing online work "That's when our brains turn on." Because of her comfort and confidence with technology from outside of school, she felt engaged and motivated when working with online tools-- a feeling that had not worn off after a year and a half of building collaborative wikis (some folks suggest that the motivation from technology quickly wears off as novetly wears off; I didn't get many reports of that). She then looked at my graying hair and said "I'm sure for you it was writing letters or something." Sigh. An eighth grade science teacher once told me, tongue in cheek, "I never realized what low regard my students held me in until I started having them turn work into each other." Students are motivated to perform for their peers. Many other technology researchers have found connections between networked technologies and motivation, enough to have the relationship featured in the National Education Technology Plan.Here's one random article about an iPad app today that taps into some of the same themes about engagement.
That said, I've also heard a number of stories from schools where students find technology usage quite unmotivating. These tend to occur in places where students have strong expectations of how school is supposed to happen. In high-performing schools, this tends to manifest as students saying (tacitly), "I will do however much work you assign, as long as you make it completely clear how I can get an A." In low-performing schools it tends to manifest as "I will not disrupt this environment so long as you provide simple work that I can complete." In these kinds of cultures, new technologies can profoundly disrupt both relationships and students sense of competence. If students used to routine are given technology challenges without clear answers, clear structures, or clear guidelines, they can quickly become disengaged with new technologies. Technology can be a positive disrupting force in these kinds of environments, but only with an accompanying culture change.
These findings are a good reminder that learning technologies are not like fire-- you don't get a benefit by standing near them. They are a technology like pharmaceuticals-- where the right intervention, with the right group, in the right dose, at the right time can be powerful, and messing any of those things up can be ineffective or even harmful.