Self-Determination Theory

Motivation has been defined as “the processes that accounts for an individual's intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal” (Robbins & Judge, 2010, p.305). Motivation theory looks at factors influencing “an individual’s willingness to exert effort to achieve the organization’s goals, conditioned by this effort’s ability to satisfy individual needs” (DeCenso & Robbins, 1994, p. 327).

Motivational theories have been broadly tested and are looking to describe what stimulates and sustains the behaviour of an individual over a period of time (Krause, 2010). When considering motivation and applying to an educational setting or online environment, it plays an important role in learning and teaching, starting from the initial stages of engagement into an (e)Learning activity, through to the process of staying and continuing to study.

The origins of motivation theory go back to the field of behavioural psychology (Freud, 1962; Skinner, 1953), which focuses upon specific human responses in order to replicate precise conditions and achieve specific outcomes (Deci & Ryan, 1985).

Several academic and industry articles were written on the relationship between eLearning, the behaviour of individual and learning preferences of those individuals, with motivational frameworks widely utilised to assess effectiveness of eLearning practices and perceptions of the learners.

Self-Determination theory (SDT) is a theory of motivation that has been developed in 1980es by two psychologists: Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan (1985). The theory has investigated external and internal drivers that lead human beings to act. This perspective has been extensively tested in the last thirty years and suggested that human behaviours can be seen as intrinsically and extrinsically motivated.

Intrinsically motivated behaviours are those that are engaged in an activity for its own sake, for the pleasure and satisfaction derived from performing them (Deci, 1975; Ryan

& Deci, 2000). Those are the activities, which are performed by individuals without any material rewards or constraints (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 1987). Therefore, internal forces such as values, passions and interests drive intrinsic motivations. While extrinsic motivations refer on any activity for a consequence separable from the activity itself. It can be a reward or the avoidance of a punishment (Ryan & Deci, 2000). According to the model that is presented in Table 4., there are four types of extrinsic motivation which can be ordered along a self-determination continuum. From lower to higher levels of self-determination, they are: i) external, ii) introjected, iii) identified, and iv) integrated regulation.

Table 4. Self-Determination Continuum. Taken from Ryan & Deci (2000)

External regulations happen when behaviour of a person is externally regulated through rewards or constraints. Individuals in this situation are undertaking an activity in order to obtain an external reward or avoid a punishment.

Introjected regulations are internal rewards and punishments. Introjected regulations are characterised by ego-involvement of the individuals, their feeling of internal pressure, guilt or shame. For this very reason, the source of control is inside the individual.

However, while internal to the person, this form of internalization is not truly self-determined since it is limited to the internalization of external possibilities.

In contrast, identified regulations occur when behaviour is valued by the individual and is perceived as being chosen by oneself. Behaviour is internally regulated but in a self-determined way. With the identified regulations, an individual accepts an activity as personally meaningful and important to oneself.

Integrated regulations, the last type of extrinsic motivations happens when the person carries out the behaviour, which is fully integrated with oneself, so they are included in a person's self-evaluations and beliefs on personal needs. Integrated motivations share qualities with intrinsic motivation but are still classified as extrinsic due to the fact, that are trying to be achieved are for reasons extrinsic to the self rather than due to the internal enjoyment or interest in the task, which is being undertaken.

More than thirty years of research has shown that intrinsic motivations lead to better persistence performance and satisfaction in variety of tasks in various domain, such as education, organizational and behavioural health. According to Deci and Ryan (2002), there are three psychological needs that motivate the self to initiate behaviour and are essential for psychological health and the well-being of an individual. The theory proposes that the adoption of intrinsic motivation over extrinsic depends on the

satisfaction of three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Autonomy is the desire to self-organize one’s actions, when individual can freely pursue the activity and feel volitional in doing so (Ryan & Connell, 1989). In case of the eLearning usage, perceived autonomy refers to the eLearning support for the learners’

desire to self-organize their actions.

Competence is a psychological need that individuals tend to be effective in their interactions with the environments and when they perform an activity. Perceived competence refers to the belief that one can successfully perform a distinct set of actions required to use effectively eLearning. The concept of competence is very similar to the concept of self-efficacy developed by Bandura (1986).

Relatedness is the psychological need to feel connected and supported by important people, such as manager, parents, teachers and teammates. Perceived relatedness refers to the belief that one feels connected and supported by important people for him or her, such as instructors or other learners.

Several researchers have tested possible variables, which influence intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations of individuals. According to Igbaria, et al., (1995), external factors such as organizational characteristics have significant effects on individuals’ intentions to use technology system based on the presence or the absence of the necessary skills, opportunities, and resources to use the system. Management support is perceived as one of the most important dimensions in an organization training culture, which includes encouragement and recognition from the management, allocation of resources, and instructional development assistance. Organization support within the companies can be presented through internal policies, procedures and practices that demonstrate the importance of training and development efforts, such as reward systems and resources to acquire and apply learned skills.

Another important discovery within the empirical research in the last thirty years is that rewards (Deci et al., 1999), deadlines (Amabile et al., 1976), evaluation (Amabile, 1979) and threats (Deci & Casacio, 1972) can diminish people’s intrinsic motivations both in time spent on the activity during a free choice period and in terms of self-reported interest in the task.

Apart from the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, Deci and Ryan (1985) claim that there is a third construct, a-motivation, which must be considered to fully understand human behaviour. Individuals are not motivated when they perceive a lack of relationship between their behaviour and the outcomes. According to Deci and Ryan non-motivated

behaviours are neither specifically intrinsically nor extrinsically motivated and any types of rewards will not be able to make the person participate in the activity.

SDT, which was described by Pintrich and Schunk (2002, p.257) as “one of the most comprehensive and empirically supported theories of motivation available today”, has been successfully applied to a variety of settings and specific domains, including health care (Williams et al., 2006), politics (Losier, et al., 2001) and religion (Neyrinck et al., 2005). However, education has been the most applied domain in the SDT research (Guay

& Boggiano, 2001; Harter, 1981; Niemiec et al., 2006; Ryan & Connell, 1989), especially considering formal educational institutions (Guay & Boggiano, 2001) as well as motivations in the workplace (Gagne & Deci, 2005). Vallerand, et al., (1989) have explored the relationship between motivational styles and educational outcomes. The application of SDT has been also recognized in the last years in the research of the eLearning domain (Chen, 2007; Chen & Jang, 2010; Cheng et al., 2012). For instance, Schroff et al., (2007) have tested SDT on two online certificate programs that lead to special educational certification for a university in the United States, while Roca and Gagné (2008) examined eLearning continuance intention in the workplace.

Furthermore, SDT was applied to examine the effects of motivational factors affecting TAM constructs in the eLearning in a work setting (Roca & Gagné, 2008). They introduced three motivational factors (perceived autonomy support, perceived competence and perceived relatedness) based on SDT.

According to the research undertaken by Bonk (2002) several students in corporate training environments, while attending eLearning training courses have no desire to learn and their only motivation is to pass the test (Kurse, 2004). Rabak and Cleveland-Innes (2006) investigated the factors that influence employees' acceptance and resistance to a corporate eLearning initiative provided by a large retail chain. Their findings indicate that time, meaningful recognition for participation, personal and technical support are the main factors that affect successful implementation of corporate eLearning initiatives.