Abstract
College students’ retrospective reports commonly indicate motivational declines associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Self-Determination Theory, the present study provided a more nuanced examination of the pandemic’s motivational effect by measuring actual change in six distinct types of motivation. We compared motivation trajectories from the first to the fourth year of college for two cohorts of students, with the fourth-year measurement taken prior to the pandemic in one cohort (n = 206) but during the pandemic in the other (n = 270). Compared to the pre-pandemic cohort, the COVID cohort showed sharper declines in identified and intrinsic motivation but no differences in controlled motivation or amotivation. Motivational declines associated with the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to be both real and specific to autonomous motives.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education
The present study focused on one of the most commonly reported effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on college students: a sense of declining motivation (Gonzalez-Ramirez et al, 2021; Hicks et al, 2021; Tasso et al, 2021)
In order to explore these possibilities, we considered the effects2 of the COVID-19 pandemic on the full range of motivation types within the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) continuum
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education It began with the large scale shift to online instruction in early 2020 and continued into subsequent academic years with modifications to most aspects of functioning including instructional models, residential offerings, student enrollment, and institutional finances (June and Elias, 2021; Smalley, 2021). Undergraduates at a research university reported decreases in motivation and self-regulation alongside increases in stress following the shift to remote instruction (Usher et al, 2021). Even more strikingly, when these same undergraduates were asked about the most stressful aspect of the pandemic in an open-ended query, the most common response was difficulties with motivation and self-regulation – mentioned by approximately one-third of all students (Usher et al, 2021)
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