LEARNING MOTIVATION AND STUDY ENGAGEMENT: DO THEY CORRELATE WITH GPA? AN EVIDENCE FROM INDONESIAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

INTRODUCTION:Bahji, et. al. (2013) reported that in emerging countries, there is a decreasing student's motivation to participate learning activity in the classroom. There are some factors that influence findings:1. The development of Information Technology.2. The usage of Information Technology in Indonesia.3. The usage of internet as a learning media tools.The decrease in student's motivation is also faced by some universities in Indonesia, especially in Department of Information Systems at Duta Wacana Christian University. Starting from 2012, Information Systems Department has been facing this problem. Figure 1 shows the declining GPA in Information Systems Department.From figure 1, it is shown that there is a significant decline of GPA in every year. In 2012, student's GPA is 2.536 whereasin 2013, Information Systems students have an average of 2.337. And in 2014, Information Systems students have an average of 2.282. And from figure 2, it is reported that students who have GPA between 1 and 2 is increasing. It means that students face problems with their study.Based on those problems, it is an interesting topic to conduct research in student's motivation, especially in Information Systems Department. Researchers have three research questions, as follows:1. To acknowledge students' motivation level in Information Systems Department2. To find correlation between students' motivation and students achievement, especially GPA.3. To study the relationship between students' engagement in learning process and students' academic achievement.LITERATURE REVIEW:Academic achievement is one tool to measure students' academic performance. Based on Center for Research and Development Academic Achievement (CRIRES) (2005) report, academic achievement is a construct to measure student's achievementabout knowledge and skills based on student's age, student's previous experience, and each student capacity related to social, education, and qualification. To measure the academic achievement, educators use different kind of assessment. Assessment is a continuous process that bring some valuable information about learning process (Linn and Gronlund, 1995). Hargis (2003) commented that thegrading are supposed to be motivating and to provide goals to strive for. In other hand, it can give more possibilities to the students to cheat. Combination between score and standard achievement process provides two set of data refers to students achievements. (Haladyna, 1999).Learning is a process that can bring some changes in human knowledge and behavior, including social, psychology, and other kind of changes (Bahji, et. al., 2013). There are some factors that influence the learning effect. Motivation and engagement are two of factors that influence the process and its result. There is shifting paradigm in learning, from teacher oriented to student oriented. Student oriented paradigm needs higher student motivation than teacher oriented. It needs higher student motivation because motivation is related with competences and relationship with others (Ryan and Deci, 2000).Motivation is also related with personnel factors, social variable, human thought, and human belief (Steadward, et. al., 2003). So, learning motivation is a kind of individual investment in learning process. Motivation is also related with enthusiasm to do something to be able to bring significant process for specific actions. Zimmerman, et. al. (2014), tells that motivation also related with internal factors that influence, guide, and maintain students to gain specific outcome.There are two kinds of motivation: (1) Intrinsic motivation; (2) Extrinsic Motivation. Deci and Moller (2005) gives a brief explanation related with this two kind of motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from internal and extrinsic comes from external. Students will contribute and participate in the learning process if they have intrinsic motivation that helps them to adapt with teachers and subjects. …