Identifying Motivational Goals and Tactics

Abstract

Now that you have collected information about the situation and the audience and analyzed the audience and the existing materials, it is time to set your goals for the project and to create the list of motivational tactics that you will use to enhance your instruction. Your goals will be expressed in the form of objectives that describe the things you want to achieve and how you will know if you’ve achieved it. After completing this step, it will be time to create your list of motivational tactics. There are two steps in this process. The first is to brainstorm as many ideas as you can think of that are related to the motivational issues in your situation. The final step in this phase involves the final selection of motivational tactics. When you review your list of tactics and make decisions about which ones to actually include, you must consider a variety of constraints. These are listed in the instructions for Worksheet 7, but briefly, they refer to the amount of time you will have to develop your tactics, their relevance to the course objectives, and the time required to implement them. Always remember that in an instructional environment, the role of the motivational tactics is to stimulate and sustain students’ motivation to learn. Therefore, the motivational tactics are subordinate to the instructional tactics.