supervisor: loes hogenkamp
Topic
Motivation and affect are important prerequisites for learning to occur. Instructional designers have been occupied with the question how to shape their learning materials in a way that motivation and positive emotions will be elicited, resulting in better learning outcomes. One way to do this is to add decorative features to the instruction to induce positive emotions. Features that are used could be, but are not limited to decorative illustrations, warm instead of cool colors, or text inducing positive emotions. Although sounding promising, research has found inconclusive answers about whether engaging features will indeed lead to better learning outcomes, and which role emotions play here. Although motivation or positive emotions might be elicited on the one hand, irrelevant design features might hinder learning on the other hand as they might take the attention away from the task.
Method
For this study, you will conduct an experiment to investigate the role of affective design features in students’ affective state, motivation, and/ or learning outcomes. Therefore, you need to design a task including these affective design features. Students will perform the task and you will gather data by means of a knowledge test and or questionnaire. Possible research questions for your thesis could be:
- To what extent are emotions elicited with decorative illustrations related to motivational traits (i.e. interest, intrinsic/ extrinsic motivation, goal orientation, task motivation, self-efficacy)?
- What is the effect of positive text framing on learners’ emotions and learning outcomes?
The exact research question, design, and target group of investigation can be discussed with your supervisor.
references
Plass, J.L., & Horvey, C. (2021). The emotional design principle in multimedia learning. In R.E. Mayer & L. Fiorella (Reds.), The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (pp. 324-336). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108894333.034
Schneider, S., Nebel, S., & Rey, G.D. (2016). Decorative pictures and emotional design in multimedia learning. Learning and Instruction, 44 (pp. 65-73). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2016.03.002
Schrader, C., Kalyuga, S., & Plass, J.L. (2021). Motivation and affect in multimedia learning. In R.E. Mayer & L. Fiorella (Reds.), The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (pp. 121-131). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108894333.012