Designing business school courses to promote student motivation: An application of the job characteristics model

Abstract

Student motivation within the classrooms is a widely recognized problem and will remain so in the foreseeable future. Literature suggests that students’ motivation for learning and performance can be enhanced by creating an appropriate classroom environment, which is again determined by the design of various structural characteristics of a course, such as type of tasks, autonomy of students, and evaluation. On the basis of the framework of Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model (JCM) and support from educational research, this conceptual article identifies the structural characteristics instrumental to an effective course design and presents related instructional strategies for maximizing student motivation in business school classrooms. Various issues related to the proposed application of the JCM framework in classrooms, including its relevance to the larger landscape of business education, are also discussed. © 2007, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.