Nicole Loorbach

The Effects of Motivational Elements in User Instructions

Should instructional texts be purely technical, with a focus on effectiveness and efficiency, or should they also focus on satisfying and motivating users? Good arguments have been made for paying attention to motivational aspects. But only analyses of existing instructions have been published so far, and guidelines for making user instructions motivational have not yet been studied carefully. This article presents motivational strategies and an experiment to test their effects. The results show that motivational elements have little effect on users’ effectiveness and efficiency in performing tasks, their product appreciation, and their self-efficacy, but they do increase users’ appreciation for the instructions.

Validation of the Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS) in a self-directed instructional setting aimed at working with technology

The ARCS Model of Motivational Design has been used myriad times to design motivational instructions that focus on attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction in order to motivate students. The Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS) is a 36-item situational measure of peoples reactions to instructional materials in the light of the ARCS model. Although the IMMS has been used often, both as a pretest and a posttest tool serving as either a motivational needs assessment prior to instruction or a measure of peoples reactions to instructional materials afterward, the IMMS so far has not been validated extensively, taking statistical and theoretical aspects of the survey into account. This paper describes such an extensive validation study, for which the IMMS was used in a self-directed instructional setting aimed at working with technology (a cellular telephone). Results of structural equation modeling show that the IMMS can be reduced to 12 items. This Reduced Instructional Materials Motivation Survey IMMS (RIMMS) is preferred over the original IMMS. The parsimonious RIMMS measures the four constructs attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction of the ARCS model well, and reflects its conditional nature.

Effecten van motiverende elementen in instructieve teksten

Moeten instructieve teksten zoals gebruiksaanwijzingen de gebruiker motiveren om de beschreven acties op een goede manier uit te voeren? In dit artikel beschrijven we twee studies naar de effecten van twee op vertrouwen gerichte motiverende elementen in een gebruiksaanwijzing voor een mobiele telefoon: controlestappen en motivational agents. In de eerste studie hebben we de acceptatie van en de waardering voor deze elementen door een specifieke doelgroep (senioren) onderzocht. De resultaten laten zien dat een deel van de deelnemers enige bezwaren heeft tegen motivational agents in een gebruiksaanwijzing terwijl een ander deel motivational agents wel waardeert. Controlestappen worden door bijna alle deelnemers gewaardeerd. In de tweede studie hebben we getoetst welke effecten deze motiverende elementen hebben op het vertrouwen van deze doelgroep in hun eigen kunnen, op hun motivatie en op de taakuitvoering. Uit de resultaten blijkt dat beide motiverende elementen een bescheiden positieve invloed hebben op de taakuitvoering.