Week One: Spending Time with John Keller

Hello fellow IDE 736 Classmates!

This week’s required readings got us off to a roaring start by plunging us headfirst into the work of John M. Keller, a noted motivational designer and theorist.  While some of the other readings focused more on a psychological view of motivation by detailing information on the multitude of relevant theories, other articles focused on the instructional designer’s perspective by marrying motivation theory to instructional design and related outputs.  The latter is where Keller’s work became the “star of the show.”

Keller’s macro theory on motivation, performance and instructional influence takes a holistic approach to defining multiple variables that effect learning and performance.  His theory includes “person inputs” and “environmental inputs” that create outputs of effort and performance followed by consequences that circle back into feeding new inputs. The readings provide some detail on how many theories support the “person inputs.”  Keller explains that the notion of expectancy is supported by research on many ideas of locus of control, attributions, self-efficacy, success vs. failure, and learned helplessness to name a few.  Keller’s theory is robust and comprehensive in its inclusive nature.  It also represents a continuous process as consequences contribute to the next learning.  Depending on the circumstances, this could contribute to either self-fulfilling prophecy or continuous improvement.

However, Keller takes his theory to another level by adding another contribution to the field of instructional design. His corresponding motivation design model, articulated more fully as the ARCS (i.e., categorized by attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction) Model, provides an approachable, useable tool for new and veteran instructional designers alike to create or improve, respectively, their instructional products. The additional articles outline not only specific instructional strategies that support each category within the model, but self-help questions the designer can use as a check for success.  Personally, I thought the approachability of the model was either the mark of genius or the work of someone devoted to a lifetime of research.  However, Ruth Small challenged my perhaps overly enthusiastic view of Keller’s work by outlining others who have provided additional insight into this area including Dodge, Brophy, Kuhlthau, and Burdick.

The final required reading about Abraham Maslow provided me with some new insight on self-actualization.  Some of the B-needs (i.e., being needs) seemed to correlate with Keller’s “people inputs” and were perhaps foundations for Keller’s value category.  Although alluded to in our first Keller reading, Maslow’s contribution to Keller’s work was just brushed on.  Having studied Maslow’s work previously, I was unclear how it led to Keller’s work, but the discussion on B-needs filled in the blanks.  The discussion and criticism that ended the article was interesting in terms of challenging Maslow’s basic premise that lower needs in his pyramid needed to be satisfied before higher level needs motivate.  Examples of starving artists and victims of war in Victor Fankl’s work seemed to debunk my previous notions of the hierarchy of needs.  But, again, as Keller mentioned in our first reading, Motivational Design of Instruction, we are dealing here with difficult stuff to measure.

From these readings, so far I feel like a journeyman in the later days of my apprenticeship to become a professional instructional designer. This time, I am working under the master craftsman, John M. Keller to ingest his vast wisdom on answering the question, “what are the keys to motivating individuals to learn, and how does an instructional designer operationalize those keys in the design process?”  With several of the IDDE courses behind me, the information and concepts I am learning are building on one and other, and the satisfaction is increasing with every course I take.  Perhaps I am actually experiencing the relevance, confidence, and satisfaction that Keller has so aptly described.