Students' Effort Investment in Poorly Designed Instruction Harms Motivation Even If They Learn

What is it about?

How learners invest effort not only impacts their learning, but also their motivation. This study demonstrates that when students invested effort in learning from materials and instruction that were well-designed and effective, their confidence increased over time. Conversely, when their effort was invested unproductively due to less effective instructional design, their confidence decreased concurrently. These motivational effects were separate from their learning outcomes, so their confidence level was not reflective of how much they actually learned. We interpret this to mean that students have a sense of their "return on investment" for the effort they put into learning, and when that return is low, it harms their belief that they will be able to succeed, regardless of how much they actually learn.

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Why is it important?

The study's findings are important, because instructors may be inclined to say that the design of lessons and materials are not important as long as students learn the material. They might also say that students' confidence stems from successful learning. Our findings suggest that neither of these beliefs is accurate--when students invest their effort in learning from materials and instruction that are not well designed, they draw negative conclusions about their likelihood of success even when they do succeed in learning the material.