Title: The impacts of different reward structures as motivations strategies on an online undergraduate computer literacy course

Authors: Nancy Tsai

Addresses: Faculty of Information Systems and Business Analytics, College of Business, California State University, Sacramento, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, California 95819, USA

Abstract: Online learning has become a major form of instruction in the higher education. However, students' poor performance is a common drawback to this learning environment. Therefore, designing and implementing different learning reward structures to stimulate students' studying efforts might improve students' learning outcomes. The objective of this study has been to measure the impacts on students' online learning behaviour, achievement, and engagement based on four types of learning rewards: none and three learning reward structures. Research data includes 5,000 student performance records collected over four consecutive semesters. The analysis of variance indicated that the motivation strategy did improve learning behaviour in terms of lesson completion rate and assignment score as well as learning achievement in terms of their final exam score. The Chi-square test showed that the motivation strategy could somewhat foster learning engagement measured in terms of pass rate but failed to change the drop rate.

Keywords: motivation; learning outcomes; online education; computer literacy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTCS.2023.134848

International Journal of Teaching and Case Studies, 2023 Vol.14 No.2, pp.188 - 210

Received: 06 Jul 2023
Accepted: 05 Aug 2023
Published online: 14 Nov 2023 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article