College of Information Studies
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1631
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item PREDICTING AND MOTIVATING ACHIEVEMENT IN SELF-PACED LEARNING: A FORMATIVE DESIGN, STUDY AND EVALUATION(2014) Goldman, Alina; Bederson, Benjamin; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Student motivation and retention is a notorious problem in self-paced and mastery environments. This thesis uses a formative study conducted during a self-paced mastery course at the University of Maryland to understand how background variables affect achievement and to explore whether student success can be positively influenced by: a) receiving a course credit suggestion; b) setting goals and sticking to self-made deadlines; c) viewing aggregated and individual progress feedback; and d) receiving game-inspired incentives and rewards. After evaluating the effectiveness of the integrated design, the thesis suggests design changes to improve motivation.Item COLLABORATIVE SCIENCE ACROSS THE GLOBE: THE INFLUENCE OF MOTIVATION AND CULTURE ON VOLUNTEERS IN THE UNITED STATES, INDIA, AND COSTA RICA.(2013) Rotman, Dana; Preece, Jennifer J; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Reliance on volunteer participation for collaborative scientific projects has become extremely popular in the past decade. Cutting across disciplines, locations, and participation practices, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world are now involved in these studies, and are advancing tasks that scientists cannot accomplish alone. Although existing projects have demonstrated the value of involving volunteers to collect data, few projects have been successful in maintaining volunteer involvement over long periods of time. Therefore, it is important to understand the unique motivations of volunteers and their effect on participation practices, so that effective partnerships between volunteers and scientists can be established. This study provides a first look into the relationship between motivation and culture in the context of ecology-focused collaborative scientific projects around the world. Projects in three distinct cultures - the United States, India, and Costa Rica - were examined by triangulating qualitative and quantitative methods followed by a cross-cultural comparison. The findings reveal a temporal process of participation that is highly dependent on motivation and culture. Initial participation stems in most cases from self-directed motivations. However, as time progresses, the motivational process becomes more complex and includes both self-directed motivations and collaborative motivations. In addition, motivation is strongly modulated by local cultural norms, expectations, and practices. Collaborative and scientific cultures also have an impact throughout the course of the volunteers' participation. This research provides theoretical and practical contributions: its findings extend current understanding of theories of motivation by showing the connection between culture and motivation, and demonstrate how cultural effects lie at the core of motivation and participation practices in volunteer-based collaborative scientific projects. These findings will also inform scientists, project leaders, educators, administrators, and designers on ways to entice and maintain long-term volunteer participation in collaborative scientific projects that are situated in different cultures.Item User Acceptance of Community Emergency Alert Technology: Motivations and Barriers(2009) Wu, Fei; Preece, Jennifer J; Qu, Yan; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of the study is to investigate the factors that motivate the acceptance of emergency alert technologies that are designated for the community's emergency preparedness and response. By investigating the acceptance case of UMD Alerts at the University of Maryland, I explore three related questions through a three-phase, mixed-methods research design: First, what are the key factors that influence the acceptance and use of emergency alert technology? Second, how are different motivational factors related to the intention to use emergency alert technology? Third, what mechanisms may be integrated into system design and implementation to motivate user acceptance? I identify key motivational factors by reviewing the literature and conducting in-depth interviews. Then, I conduct a survey to examine the relationships between the motivational factors and the intention or behavior of acceptance. Finally, I test the motivational effects of the "subjective norm" - one of the predominant factors derived from the interview study and the survey - in a field experiment. Integrating the findings from these three phases, this research shows that user acceptance of emergency alert technology is affected by a variety of factors that the general technology acceptance model (TAM) fails to take into account. In brief, users may be more motivated to accept such technologies if 1) the meaningful use of the technology can be observed in everyday life; 2) the technology system behavior can be easily controlled; and 3) the diffusion of the technology is promoted through the users' social networks and is compatible with the culture of the user community. This dissertation work demonstrates a "deepening" effort in applying TAM to response technology acceptance and establishes a foundation for challenging new lines of research that more closely examine the motivations and barriers to technology acceptance in sociotechnical contexts.