INVESTIGATING STUDENTS MOTIVATION TOWARDS LEARNING AND FACTORS INFLUENCING BEHIND: A PRIMARY DATA ANALYSIS

Shamima Nasrin¹

¹Lecturer, Department of Economics & Banking, International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC), Bangladesh

Keywords:Intrinsic motivation Extrinsic motivation Cronbach’s alpha Intelligence Quotient Emotional Quotient Conscious Quotient.

ARTICLE HISTORY: Received:13 August 2018 Revised:17 September 2018 Accepted:19 October 2018 Published:12 November 2018.

Contribution/ Originality:This study is one of very few studies which have investigated motivation towards learning among Bangladeshi students. This study documents the level of motivation of present learners, the influencing factors of extrinsic motivation and possible ways of motivating future learners intrinsically.

1. INTRODUCTION

The word “Motivation” refers to something that triggers us in doing something di-heartedly. To be successful in life no matter what someone is doing needs to do with sincerity. Maybe this is only for one's survival, but it requires doing it with accountability. There are so many works one can choose to do but not every person chooses the same thing, and that's the point where it differs concerning what one wants in their life. Motivation is divided into two varieties such as intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. In one hand inherent motivation relates to the level of motivation when someone is doing something even if there is no reward or return of doing that. This type of motivation comes from deep inside of the heart. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is something that involves the greed of reward or return. The more the gain, the more a person will be motivated extrinsically. Motivation to study is vital in the life of a student, but it can be intrinsic or extrinsic. As extrinsic motivation is positively related to reward thus it will not stay for a more extended period; instead, it will vanishes away just after receiving the return out of it. But the intrinsic type of motivation is opposite to this and is everlasting.

As this paper attempts to investigate whether our students are motivated enough in gathering knowledge thus the answer to this question can be related to intrinsic motivation but if our students are studying with the aim of something else rather than learning in-depth than it can be referred to extrinsic motivation. As this type of research is limited in Bangladesh perspective thus to get some idea about student's way of thinking, the author did a pilot survey through unstructured interview method where students were asked that “why are they studying up to university level”? Most of the students answered the most vital one "to get a job". Then the author asked out of curiosity "how do you study"? "Do you study on a regular basis to get a good score"? The flabbergasting answer given by most of the student was “we study only before the examination date” and only a few of them said, "Yes, we do prepare our note on a regular basis". Thus it was apparent that most of the students were motivated extrinsically and a very few were motivated intrinsically. This discussion with students of different semesters helps the author to identify the intrinsic factors of motivation and the extrinsic factors of motivation.

Figure-1. Sources of motivation and example questions

Source: Framework Developed by Author.

Based on the responses of some fundamental issues of students author designed questionnaire and circulated it to the students of different courses to identify the real ratio of extrinsically motivated students and intrinsically motivated students. There have been a lot of surveys in other countries regarding the motivation of students, but those were only related to the specific subject area. Afzal et al. (2010 ) investigated the relationship between motivation and academic performance of 250 students studying in different universities in Pakistan. They found that motivation is positively related to academic achievement and the range was 23 and 34 per cent due to extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Lee et al. (2002 ) investigated the issue of motivation and expectation in the introductory statistics and found that hope and care of instructor and aim of learning are necessary for motivation. Williams and Caroline (2010 ) suggested five essential bullets from improving the motivation level of students.

After reviewing pieces of literature, the author realized that this type of analysis is new concerning Bangladesh and thus this paper also contains some limitations. As this paper is based on one private university students only, therefore, it may not be able to explain the real picture of Bangladeshi students. The further investigation requires to get widen reality, and it may also include students worldwide.

2. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

So many factors were working behind of taking out this study on students. Mostly main intentions were to determine whether students are motivated enough in gathering knowledge or studying to gain a certificate to get a job? If so then what are the factors influencing behind being motivated to certificate gaining knowledge only?

3. DATA AND METHODOLOGY

3.1. Data Information

This analysis is mostly based on primary data. The data for this study comes from a survey of 500 university students, limited to only one private university in Bangladesh. The questionnaire contains 23 questions for students out of which seven were related to demographic information and rest of them were related to the problem. It took approximately 15 minutes to fill in. Out of 500 students, only 414 students responded, out of which 179 male and 235 female students. The overall response rate from students was 69 %.The average age of the students was 20. The percentages of the first year, second year, third year, and fourth year and masters/MBA students are respectively 16.2, 28.6, 40.7, 14.0 and 0.5 per cent. The survey form was first prepared in English, and a pilot survey was conducted on 32 students who found some problems understanding language as English is not the mother linguistic thus for better understanding and the correct response it was translated into Bangla language. 

3.2. Methodology of the Study

The study is mostly based on the descriptive analysis. To test the reliability of questionnaire the "Cronbach’s alpha” test were used with the help of software SPSS. For other analyses frequency calculations and chi-square test were performed by the researcher.

4. RESULT ANALYSIS

4.1. Reliability Test of the Questionnaire

It is essential to test the reliability of the survey as this is the base of the analysis. With the help of software SPSS, the Cronbach’s alpha result came out as 0.700 which is highly satisfactory.

4.2. Are Our Students Motivated Enough Intrinsically? What are the Reasons Influencing Behind?

According to business dictionary definition: “Motivation results from the interaction of both conscious and unconscious factors such as intensity of desire or need, incentive or reward value of the goal and expectations of the individual and his or her peers”. To find out the motivation level one can ask thyself that is he/she motivated enough in doing what he/she does every day. If someone gives his/her 100% in doing something then yes, the person is motivated in doing that particular task. The same person may be demotivated to something else which may be in the favorite list of someone else. So we can say motivation is dedication, working hard and being honest in doing something.

Now concerning students in most of the cases studying is not what they want to do. Maybe he/she wants to play video games, reading up on celebrity gossip, hanging out with friends, taking photos and uploading it on facebook, then wait for likes and comments or watching movies. As they don't find this kind of attraction in studying thus, they are not motivated to knowledge gathering instead they are considering because they need a good score and weighted certificate. Understanding some behaviors researcher tried to develop few questions to check what attracts students the most and up to what extent.

Students were asked to answer a few questions to test their level of motivation in acquiring knowledge. As we can create an image of a student who is desperately seeking knowledge, will do/like certain activities such as preparing own note, reading newspapers and so on. Keeping that in mind, students were asked to mark themselves from 1 to 5, where 1= Never, 2= Rarely, 3=Sometimes, 4=Usually and 5= Always, against questions like whether they want to work hard for gathering knowledge, whether they do prepare their note, do they read newspaper for gathering expertise or do they like teachers who provide notes in the class etcetera.

Students who have marked themselves in scale 4-5, are considered as highly motivated to gather knowledge. Who have characterized in 3 are in between motivation and demotivation. Who have scored themselves in 1-2 is highly demotivated to gather intelligence rather the only reason for them to study is a certificate.

In most of the cases, students marked themselves in scale 3, which means they are not highly motivated and motivation lacks a lot in gathering knowledge in the sense that they do not like to work hard, prepare own note, do library work, reading the newspaper and do not wish to read non-academic books. Here is the table below that interprets the percentage of students who are interested in doing specific tasks that reflect their level of motivation in gathering knowledge.

Table-1. Highest Percentages of response by male and female students

Source: SPSS Calculation

As we can see the percentages are too low, it can witness the lower level of interest in gathering knowledge. The proportions of students who like to do library work and prepare their note are 1% and 8.9% male and 1.5% and 22.7% female respectively. On another question, 24.6% of male students reported as they like teachers who provide notes in the class and girls' ratio is 40.3% in this case. This can help us to conclude that students prefer ready-made notes in spite of preparing on their own. To be optimistic it might be the case when students who develop their note from what the teacher provides, but the other results compel us to be pessimistic.

Students are assumed to be interested in regular happenings around the world and thus will find newspaper as a significant source of information, but surprisingly only 10.2% male and 12.1% female reads newspaper regularly. One can assume that if they do not like doing library work and reading newspaper, then they might be spending their time reading non-academic books. Again the surprising ratio (8.7% male and 10.9% female) is less than the proportion of those who at least read the newspaper. 

Students were asked, “How often do they prefer success over excellence?” Again this answer has been marked under 1-5 scale, where 1= Never, 2= rarely, 3=Sometimes, 4=usually and 5= Always. The response is not as surprising as most of the students (16.9% male and 26.4% female) answered: "they always prefer success over excellence". Success can come in many ways, mainly two, with qualification and with luck. Luck is something indefinable, but skill can be defined under certain criteria. One kind of qualification is the documented qualification that one needs to carry in a file, but another sort of qualification is undocumented, that will always be with the person. The first kind of skill can give short-run success, but the other type can provide lifelong success. Excellence is something related to the long-term success; thus if one prefers success over excellence he/she might get short-term success which is documented only and this document is called the weighted certificate in this modern era.

On the question that asked the reason why they want a weighted certificate, about 22.2% male and 35.3% female said they want good GPA to get a good job. All the above explanations support the hypothesis that students are not interested in learning rather they plan to get a good score anyhow to be eligible to apply for a job.

The level of motivation and the target has been made clear so far. Now researcher wants to find the factors those are disrupting students from “what they should do” to “what they should not do”. Students were asked few questions regarding this such as how often they get guideline from their parents, how often they get to talk with their parents regarding the importance of learning by heart and how often do they feel that spending time on social networking site is destructing them etcetera.

32.1% male and 44% female students said their parents always ask them to concentrate on studies, but only 17.9% male students and 37.3% female students agreed that they get proper guideline from their parents.

34.6% students said they are being demotivated of gathering knowledge because of spending time on social networking sites. 42.8% of students said they are losing their interest because they feel the pressure of the frequent exam.

Based on the above analysis author firstly tried to find out whether there exists any statistical relationship between gender and parental guideline. For this, Pearson chi-square test has been used.

Hₒ = There exists no statistically significant relationship between gender and parental involvement.

Ha = There exists a statistically significant relationship between gender and parental involvement.

Decision rule here is, if Pearson chi-square probability value is less than 5% level of significance, then null hypothesis cannot be accepted.

Chi-Square Tests

a. 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 6.93.

As the probability value is 0.000 < 0.05, thus the null hypothesis cannot be accepted. We can conclude that there exists a statistically significant relationship between gender and parental involvement. That means parents should not be discriminating their children concerning providing guideline whether it's a boy or girl. Discrimination may cause deteriorating results for their children's future.

Secondly, to find out the statistical relationship between social networking and gender author repeats the same test as earlier and found the following results:

Chi-Square Tests

a. 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 17.34.

As it can be seen the Pearson Chi-Square probability value = 0.238 > level of significance =0.05, thus there exists no statistically significant relationship between social networking and gender. This means that the effect of social networking is independent of gender and it is destructing both male and female students from studying.

5. RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

The reason for this article was to check whether our students are motivated enough to learn by heart or there is something else going on in our students' head. So far, the result supports that students are not studying to learn rather they are studying to achieve the certificate. Analyzing this point one may ask that why the students are trying to achieve a certificate? The answer lies underneath it, to get a job. Now the question comes in author's mind that "who are asking them to do the job"? Is it written in anywhere of their syllabus or book they read? Or it is the society and relatives who are asking them that to be settled in your life you need to find a job and to find a job you need to have a certificate? Or it is the system that we are going through for centuries are the one who is pointing out the obvious aim to everyone, and that's why every single person has taken part, has been taking part and will be taking part in the same race?

If the answer is yes for all the above questions, then the author would recommend changing the syllabus, society, system and the thought of relatives at the very first go.

The syllabus should be organized in a manner that students can feel the interest to read and join classes. We can make the class more interesting with tasks and topics that involve students directly rather than being one monotonous side lecture. A teacher can add videos and recent real-world projects to connect with the theory they are learning for better understanding. Students can be given assignments with real-time tasks which can be a group works that will help them to learn working as a team, to follow the instructions of a leader, to be organized as a team and to be able to think out of the box. Now-a-day students in Bangladesh are not willing to study anything out of the book or syllabus provided. They should be trained up in such a manner so that in future our students can tell us "redundant" when a teacher speaks precisely what is written in a book thinking that they can read the book by themselves, but a teacher should say something different out of the box. Only that day we will be creating true geniuses.
The society and relatives should be trained up in such a way that they find something else as the aim of going to school rather than as a stair of the certificate. To do so, our relatives should change their way of thinking then the society will automatically be adjusted. Relatives should not compare one with another firstly by the grades they get in their examination and secondly the position or designation they have in their career because all these comparisons create conflict and competitions.

Finally, the system should teach students to become a job creator and not a job seeker. To seek job, one needs a certificate to prove that they are eligible but to create a job one doesn't require certificate rather knowledge. To be a job seeker one needs to wait up to a certain point of time to get the certificate of eligibility but to create a job one can start from anywhere and at any age level. So the system should be developed in favor of creating entrepreneurs, not seekers.

The author is not in against of higher study instead is in against of being a certificate gaining machine.

The frequent examination is another way of destroying all through the student life. It involves admission test, first term, second term and final term in schools. After passing school, it again encompasses admission test and semester examinations. After completing graduation, it requires to seat for so many jobs related examinations to find a suitable job. So much of examinations make us puzzled and the only examination oriented. It creates pressure and frustrations which leads to suicidal attempt, mental disorder, behavioral disorder, drug addiction out of failures and finally losing the track. Who remains on the track they engage themselves in memorizing and gagging out during examinations. The author recommends no examination at all at the primary level of education and less/no examinations at senior levels. Fundamental level is the base or foundation of building up a personality of outstanding capability. A personality that behaves well with nature and surroundings can be earned from childhood. Personnel who identify that discerning how to take care of surroundings is the responsibility, not punishment will enthusiastically try to hit the books by heart with the aim of knowing about that, not with the objective of passing in the examination.

Students spend time on the internet even if they are surrounded by friends, as consequences creating themselves a real-life zombie. Spending too much time on internet influences in so many negative ways such as losing eyesight early, making brain so tired that it cannot concentrate on study. There are so many articles regarding the effects of using the internet too much. One reason for being too much attracted in virtual life instead of real life can be the lack of attachment with family members and friends. Parental involvement should be increased so that future generations can feel it friendly and safe. It can be said "dining table approach" where young stars find it interesting to seat together with family members and to share their daily deeds. This is one of the best ways of knowing about their feelings and what they are regularly doing, what they are thinking about their future, how they are preparing themselves for tomorrow. Elders can share their life experiences directly or indirectly to let them know about dos and don’ts and alert them about future consequences. In this way, family members can pass the message that no matter what is going on, family members will always be there to stand beside them.

Gender discrimination needs to be eliminated, and it should sound like an alien phrase to use in regular life. Girls have proven their efficiencies in many ways in comparison to boys. Girls are more attentive than boys in any tasks they are given. Girls are much more sincere and accountable in family life and job life. Some females play cricket better than boys. Women are now willingly taking part in adventurous and challenging jobs. There is no way that women lack behind boys. A family member should provide the same kind of facility and support to the boy and girl in their family.

To conclude with, one question hits the author’s mind that what the real education should look like? A teacher in their class teaches two plus two becomes four and students memorize it or remember it. That means students are being taught what to think not how to think. They are memorizing tons of equations, formulas and theories to solve any problem. But is there any formula exists in real life to solve the real-life problem? Is there any equation to solve business problems? The answer is a big no. Then why should they feel interested in learning those boring theories and quotes by heart? What is the point of memorizing what Shamrat Akbar has done in centuries ago? The way to solving the problem is the way of changing our teaching and evaluation method. People should be aware of the differences among IQ (intelligence quotient), EQ (emotional quotient) and CQ (conscious quotient). It is only the conscious quotient that helps us to think “why I am doing what I am doing?” .It helps people to find the purpose of doing something. It helps to know about intention and boost compassion. This intent or perseverance will lead to the answer to the question "why are you doing something? Is it out of the locus of amenity and advance or gluttony?” Because there are situations when someone may use their demonstrative brainpower to accomplish their immoral intention and only then the CQ will be the sword to overcome the problem by using IQ and EQ. Thus CQ guides us in our actions and to build up CQ one needs to start thinking out of the box and out of the syllabus. As motivation is the combination of our conscious and unconscious thinking thus there are some reasons of doing something in a certain way such as intensity to desire, reward value of the goal and expectations of our friends and family, so to direct our unconscious mind consciously, we should train up our conscious mind wisely.

REFERENCES

Afzal, H., I. Ali, M.A. Khan and K. Hamid, 2010. A study of university students’ motivation and its relationship with their academic performance. International Journal of Business and Management, 5(4): 80-88. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v5n4p80.

Lee, C., M. Meletiou, H. Wachtel and A. Zeleke, 2002. The issue of motivation and expectation in the introductory statistics–obstacles and opportunities. Refereed Proceeding, the 6th International Conference of Teaching Statistics.

Williams, K.C. and W.C. Caroline, 2010. Five key ingredients for improving student motivation. Research in Higher Education Journal, 12: 121-123.