Integrating Motivational Aspects into the Design of Learning Support in Organizations

Integrating Motivational Aspects into the Design of Learning Support in Organizations Christine Kunzmann Andreas Schmidt Volker Braun David Czech Benjamin Fletschinger Silke Kohler Verena Lüber FZI Research Center for Information Technologies Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences, Germany contact@christine-kunzmann.de | aschmidt@fzi.de http://mature-ip.eu

Outline
Introduction: why is the consideration of motivation important?
Ethnographically informed study
Model of motivational aspects
Methodology for motivational design
Conclusions & Outlook
MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks

Introduction
Employee motivation at the workplace is a very important aspect
This particularly applies to learning, collaboration, and knowledge sharing
But little has been done to address it
In KM a lot of focus has been given to monetary incentives
with very mixed success, e.g. short-lived, side-effects, can be off-putting for creative and genuine knowledge workers

Why is motivation so difficult to address?
There are plenty of models for human motivation in different fields
They help to describe a given situation , but they are of little use for deciding what to do in a (socio-technical) learning support systems.
Frequently only focussed on the individual (psychology)
Or too narrow in their understanding of human needs
Problem: motivation is a generic phenomenon, but can only be addressed in a context-specific way .

Our goals
Our (wider) context : support „knowledge maturing“
Collective learning in professional contexts
Mostly informal learning
How can we provide a helpful framework for designing a learning support system that takes care of motivational aspects?

Our approach
Ethnographically informed study
Long-lasting ethnographic studies not possible
Rather „rapid ethnography“: Immersing into the working environment with ideally a previously established relationship
Primary study at a training department in a hospital
Comparison with other studies in IT and other service companies as part of the MATURE project
=> We derived a motivational model from it
Student project team working together with two big companies for validating the model

Ethnographically informed study (1)
Results of the study
Some positive indicators for motivators
But vast majority covered barriers
positive indicators:
curiosity and personal interest
membership in a community
personal standards
status and power

Ethnographically informed study (2)
on the negative side (barriers ):
usability (of software systems)
regulations (by the organization)
workload and lack of resources
geographical barriers
lack of help
lack of money
personal attitude
competition
team culture

Model for Motivational aspects MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks

Intervention: Individual Context Individual Context Interests allow for pursuit of individual interests and account for individual needs (e.g., curiosity) experiencing competence experiencing autonomy personal sense of perfectionism Capability human resource development, e.g., training, job enrichment, mentoring etc.

Intervention: interpersonal MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks Interpersonal Context Cooperative improving the economies of cooperation create and exploit social dynamics establish team culture overcome geographical distance awarenesss Affective team building promoting communication and empathy limit competition

Intervention: Work context MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks Work Context Enablers appropriateness of tool support ensuring usability ensuring smooth transitions between different systems ensuring reliability Organizational changing organizational structure (e.g., more permissive) changing regulations appreciation, valuing of creativity, new ideas incentive systems

Methodology for incorporating motivation into the design of learning support
Immersion of technical developers in the workplace reality
as part of ethnographically informed studies
guided by the model as presented
for creating a rich understanding of the context
Derivation of personas
a precise description of a user’s characteristics
what he/she wants to accomplish with an explicit consideration of the three aspects of the model

Methodology (2)
Development of use case descriptions for those personas
direct interaction of developers and users (or their representatives)
with an explicit section on interventions targeted to motivational aspects or context conditions
4. Deriving functional and non-functional requirements from those descriptions
5. Formative evaluation of early prototypes
with end users
if possible: different motivational measures are compared to each other in order select the most effective one.

Summary & Outlook
Motivational design of informal learning support is an important step for ensuring sustainability and user acceptance of solutions.
Contributions:
Systematization of motivational aspects based on ethnographically informed studies, further validated with two interviews in big enterprises
Methodology for integrating motivational aspects into the requirements engineering process
Further research will investigate the effectiveness of concrete design measures in experiments that are targeted at improving certain motivational aspects

Contact
MATURE IP
http://mature-ip.eu
Christine Kunzmann Researcher @ FZI and Kompetenzorientierte Personalentwicklung Ankerstr. 47, 75203 Königsbach-Stein, GERMANY, http://kompetenzen-gestalten.de [email_address] Andreas Schmidt Department Manager / Scientific Coordinator MATURE FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10-14 Karlsruhe, GERMANY (http://fzi.de/ipe) andreas.schmidt@fzi.de, http://andreas.schmidt.name Open for associate partners!

Example persona
” Silke has high personal standards and aims at continuously learning to improve her work practice. To that end, she regularly reflects about how tasks were carried out and what could have been done better or worse. .. . Her sense of perfection also applies to her everyday task management. She plans her tasks and appointment each day meticulously, and prepares each meeting with elaborate notes. … Clear structures within the applications are crucial as she lacks deep knowledge about computers.”

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Integrating Motivational Aspects into the Design of Learning Support in Organizations

by Andreas Schmidt on Sep 05, 2009

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Integrating Motivational Aspects into the Design of Learning Support in Organizations — Presentation Transcript