Examining the role of motivation and learning strategies in student success in online versus face-to-face courses

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to compare the motivations and learning strategies of online and face-toface students, utilizing the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich et al., 1993). Prior research (Crede & Phillips, 2011) suggests that motivation variables play a larger role in predicting student success in online courses compared to the specific learning strategies that are used, but little research has directly compared online students to face-to-face students. Results of this study found that while online students reported lower levels of motivation compared to faceto-face students, motivation variables were more strongly correlated with course performance than learning strategies, particularly for online courses. The results are discussed with implications for how to build student motivation to succeed, particularly in an online format, as well as different considerations for lower level or upper level students.