What is intrinsic motivation?

What is intrinsic motivation?
The Factors That Promote Intrinsic Motivation. Factor Description Related Guidelines Challenge People are best motivated when they are working toward personally meaningful goals whose attainment requires activity at a continuously optimal (intermediate) level of difficulty. Set personally meaningful goals. Make attainment of goals probable but uncertain. Give enroute performance feedback. Relate goals to learners' self esteem. Curiosity Something in the physical environment attracts the learner's attention or there is an optimal level of discrepancy between present knowledge or skills and what these could be if the learner engaged in some activity. Stimulate sensory curiosity by making abrupt changes that will be perceived by the senses. Stimulate cognitive curiosity by making a person wonder about something (i.e., stimulate the learner's interest). Control People have a basic tendency to want to control what happens to them. Make clear the cause-and-effect relationships between what students are doing and things that happen in real life. Enable the learners to believe that their work will lead to powerful effects. Allow learners to freely choose what they want to learn and how they will learn it. Fantasy Learners use mental images of things and situations that are not actually present to stimulate their behavior. Make a game out of learning. Help learners imagine themselves using the learned information in real- life settings. Make the fantasies intrinsic rather than extrinsic. Competition Learners feel satisfaction by comparing their performance favorably to that of others. Competition occurs naturally as well as artificially. Competition is more important for some people than for others. People who lose at competition often suffer more than the winners profit. Competition sometimes reduces the urge to be helpful to other learners. Cooperation Learners feel satisfaction by helping others achieve their goals. Cooperation occurs naturally as well as artificially. Cooperation is more important for some people than for others. Cooperation is a useful real-life skill. Cooperation requires and develops interpersonal skills. Recognition Learners feel satisfaction when others recognize and appreciate their accomplishments. Recognition requires that the process or product or some other result of the learning activity be visible. Recognition differs from competition in that it does not involve a comparison with the performance of someone else.