How Can Curricular Elements Affect the Motivation to Study?

Abstract

(1) Background: This qualitative study aimed to identify and describe course components which affect a student’s motivation to learn within a blended-learning competency-based curriculum. (2) Methods: The data were gathered via two consecutive semi-structured group interviews. The participants were purposefully sampled from medical students attending the Family Medicine (FM) class at Saarland University (UdS) in Winter 2020. The two interviews were transcribed verbatim and inductively analysed using content analysis. (3) Results: Three categories of curricular components that affected motivation were inductively formed: (a) the provision of structure (curriculum design), where providing external learning milestones to self-regulated learning positively influenced an interviewee’s learning motivation; (b) the provision of interpersonal interactions and emotional relatedness by staff, where constructive feedback and enthusiasm from a teacher facilitated intrinsic motivation and real-life examples helped the students to remember content more easily; and (c) perceived gain in self-efficacy, where a participant’s motivation to learn a particular subject area was especially high if it appeared to be highly relevant to practice or exams and the applicability of the knowledge gained was readily apparent. (4) Conclusions: It is important for educators to be aware of how they influence a student’s motivation. This study may help to provide an orientation on what to avoid and what to include in a curriculum design project to purposefully foster motivation in students.