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Background: Mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) has long been advocated to promote students' language study outcomes. However, little is known about how using instant messaging applications (an example of MALL) affect student motivation, language anxiety, and actual achievement. Objectives: To help close this gap, we have conducted a quasi-experimental study, in which we have used self-determination theory to test a mediational process model, in an effort to understand the psychological mechanisms that underlie the effect of instant messaging applications on student outcomes. Methods: Two groups of Saudi undergraduate students (N = 447) were recruited to participate in the study. Participants under the experimental condition were invited to engage in language-related tasks with their teacher outside of class through the WhatsApp application, whereas participants under the control condition received standard teaching. We applied partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to test our model. Results and Conclusions: The results of the PLS-SEM showed that the total effects of using instant messaging applications on autonomous motivation and L2 achievement were significant but that language anxiety was influenced only indirectly and negatively through language achievement. Also, the PLS-SEM showed that our results have strong predictive power indicating support for external validity. Implications: Our results show that instant messaging applications can be used to facilitate interest and achievement and to decrease anxiety. Furthermore, we are contributing to L2 methodological literature by using applications of PLS-SEM in experimental designs that can help researchers and practitioners of motivational processes.

Inadequate academic functioning among students might be a main cause of the considerable dropout rates, and well-being and achievement problems in higher education. Few studies address the role of motivation for academic functioning. Thus, using Self-Determination Theory, the main goal of this study was to investigate motivational determinants of academic functioning among 406 biology students (mode age 21-25, 69.5% females) from nine higher education institutions in Norway. Data were collected using an online survey and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. Results show that teachers' autonomy-support positively predicts autonomous motivation and perceived competence among the students. In turn, autonomous motivation and competence positively predicts vitality, and negatively predicts dropout intentions. Achievement was only predicted by perceived competence. We recommend that instructors adopt an autonomy-supportive teaching style, for example by providing a meaningful rationale when introducing teaching and learning activities, for students to feel more competent and autonomous in their motivation.

We extended the research on autonomy-supportive teaching to universities and examined the relationships between autonomous motivation to teach and autonomy-supportive teaching. Autonomously motivated university instructors were more autonomy-supportive instructors. The freedom to make pedagogical decisions was negatively correlated with external motivation towards teaching. Participants indicated that large class sizes, high teaching loads, publication pressures, and a culture that undervalues effective undergraduate teaching undermined both student learning and their feelings of autonomy. Together these results presents a picture of a subset of university instructors who remained autonomously motivated to teach, irrespective of barriers they experienced from university administrators or policies.

From the lens of Self-Determination Theory, this study investigated the effects of a mobile application tool for identifying species on biology students' achievement and well-being. It was hypothesized that the mobile application, compared to a textbook, would enhance feelings of competence and autonomy and, in turn, intrinsic motivation, positive affect and achievement, because the mobile application's built-in functions provide students with choice and volition, informational feedback, and optimal challenges. Fifty-eight second-year students were randomly assigned to use either the mobile application or a textbook for a learning task. Well-being was assessed before and after the learning task, and intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, perceived autonomy and achievement were assessed after the task. Results indicated that the mobile application, relative to the textbook, produced higher levels of students' perceived competence, perceived autonomy and intrinsic motivation. Further, the mobile application had indirect effects on positive affect through autonomy, competence and intrinsic motivation, and on achievement through competence.

We investigate a model based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to predict academic achievement and dropout intentions among biology students in higher education in Norway. Students (n = 754) from a representative national sample participated in this cross-sectional study. The results align with our hypotheses and SDT assumptions. The model explains a substantial amount of the variance in academic achievement and dropout intentions. Specifically, autonomous motivation and perceived competence positively predict academic achievement and negatively predict dropout intentions. Controlled motivation is unrelated to academic achievement and is a positive predictor of dropout intentions. Furthermore, significant indirect effects show that need-supportive teachers and students' intrinsic aspirations positively predict academic achievement and negatively predict dropout intentions, via autonomous motivation and perceived competence. We recommend teachers to support students' need for autonomy, competence and relatedness, by providing choice and volition to facilitate autonomous motivation, and give students effectance-relevant feedback and optimal challenges to increase perceived competence.

We investigate the effects of team-based learning (TBL) on motivation and learning in a quasi-experimental study. The study employs a self-determination theory perspective to investigate the motivational effects of implementing TBL in a physiotherapy course in higher education. We adopted a one-group pretest-posttest design. The results show that the students' intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, perceived competence, and perceived autonomy support significantly increased going from lectures to TBL. The results further show that students' engagement and perceived learning significantly increased. Finally, students' amotivation decreased from pretest to posttest; however, students reported higher external regulation as a function of TBL. Path analysis shows that increases in intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, and external regulation positively predict increases in engagement, which in turn predict increases in perceived learning. We argue that the characteristics of TBL, as opposed to lectures, are likely to engage students and facilitate feelings of competence. TBL is an active-learning approach, as opposed to more passive learning in lectures, which might explain the increase in students' perception of teachers as autonomy supportive. In contrast, the greater demands TBL puts on students might account for the increase in external regulation. Limitations and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Peer mentoring has shown beneficial effects in facilitating academic and social integration among first-year students in higher education. Previous research is, however, limited by the exclusion of a comparison group, to examine whether the integration process still occurs among non-mentored students, independently of peer mentoring. By using Tinto´s theoretical framework, we examine the effects of a formal peer mentoring program, comparing these effects on integration with non-mentored students. Data was gathered from focus group interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. Our findings show that peer mentoring supports the integration process among first-year students, although the results suggest that it is not a necessary condition to ensure that integration occurs. Future studies should further extend the research to also include an evaluation of other activities taking place at the institution, to expand the knowledge of which measures facilitates the integration process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this study is to test the validity of the Motivation, Engagement, and Thriving in User Experience (METUX) model (Peters et al., 2018) in higher education. We propose a process model in which we investigate how the need-satisfaction of digital learning tools within the interface sphere and task sphere accounts for engagement, learning, and well-being. A total of 426 higher education students drawn from two subsamples participated in this cross-sectional study. A structural equation model shows that interface autonomy and competence satisfaction positively predict task autonomy and competence. Task competence, in turn, negatively predicts focused attention and positively predicts perceived usability and well-being. Task autonomy positively predicts perceived usability and reward. Based on our results, we provide some initial support for the METUX model in higher education. However, more validation work is needed to improve the scale that measures need-satisfaction in the interface and task spheres. Moreover, we find no support for the effect of task sphere on learning. Further investigations are needed into how METUX can be used in domain- and situation-specific contexts to account for increases in engagement, learning, and well-being. Finally, future studies need to include all aspects of the METUX model in order to fully test its validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We extended the research on autonomy-supportive teaching to universities and examined the relationships between autonomous motivation to teach and autonomy-supportive teaching. Autonomously motivated university instructors were more autonomy-supportive instructors. The freedom to make pedagogical decisions was negatively correlated with external motivation towards teaching. Participants indicated that large class sizes, high teaching loads, publication pressures, and a culture that undervalues effective undergraduate teaching undermined both student learning and their feelings of autonomy. Together these results presents a picture of a subset of university instructors who remained autonomously motivated to teach, irrespective of barriers they experienced from university administrators or policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current study, using self-determination theory as a theoretical framework, we used multiple real-time assessments to investigate the dichotomous relationship between autonomy need satisfaction and frustration, and how these constituents underpin student functioning among higher education students during a learning activity. In total, 124 STEM students were recruited from mandatory calculus seminars. The session lasted 90 minutes, with three fixed time measurements. Results indicate that satisfaction of the need for autonomy positively predicted vitality, situational interest, and perceived value, whereas autonomy need frustration was negatively related to the same outcome variables. Further, our results indicate fluctuations in both autonomy need satisfaction and need frustration during the calculus seminar. The results highlight well-differentiated effects of satisfaction and frustration of autonomy need and show that perceived need satisfaction and frustration constitute principal components in predicting student functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Perceived novelty in mobile applications is an inevitable aspect of today's technologies. Studies suggest that this perceived novelty effect increases motivation but wanes once the user becomes accustomed to the product. Using a Self-Determination Theory approach, the present study investigates how different tools relate to students' motivation, basic psychological needs, and achievement, over and above the effect of perceived novelty. The results from a randomized controlled experiment show that a mobile-learning tool and a digital version of a textbook are perceived as more novel than a traditional textbook. However, only the mobile-learning tool enhances the students' basic psychological needs. Additionally, using path-analysis, we find that the mobile-learning tool, need-satisfaction within the mobile-learning tool, and autonomous motivation account for achievement and internalization, over and above the effect of novelty. We argue that this finding is due to the inherent need-supportive elements within the mobile-learning tool that satisfy the basic psychological needs. Highlights • Study investigating the novelty effect of different learning tools. • Mobile learning tool and digital textbook perceived as more novel relative to traditional textbook. • Mobile learning tool enhances achievement and need satisfaction relative to digital textbook and traditional textbook. • Path-analysis show that mobile learning tool uniquely enhances need satisfaction, autonomous motivation and internalization. • Results are in line with Self-Determination Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biology students traditionally use a textbook in the field and on courses to identify species, but now a new mobile-application tool has been developed as an alternative. Guided by Self-Determination Theory (SDT) we conducted an experimental study to test the effect of the mobile-application, relative to the traditional textbook, on students' intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, and achievement. Seventy-one students were randomly assigned to either an experimental condition (mobile application - ArtsApp) or control condition (textbook - Lids flora). As hypothesised, the students using ArtsApp had higher intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, and achievement, compared to the textbook control group, with medium to large effect sizes. Furthermore, using the mobile application, relative to the textbook, predicted intrinsic motivation, which in turn, predicted higher achievement scores in a path analysis. Lastly in a hierarchical regression analysis, intrinsic motivation and autonomous motivation accounted over and above in students' interest for species identification, and importance of knowing species. These results are in line with SDT's theorising: emphasising that when students act out of interest, choice, and have an internal locus of causality, they achieve better outcomes, presumably because these satisfy students' psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Factors facilitating this are interest, choice, and feedback, which we argue are in-built functions in the mobile application as opposed to the textbook, and which might account for the positive results. Further studies with several student-groups and complex designs are needed before inferring causality across educational levels. Based on the present study, we recommend that biology teachers in higher education employ mobile application tools in species identification due to increases in motivation and a higher degree of accurate identification of sedges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we investigate the effect of manipulating intrinsic goals, relative to extrinsic goals, in a mobile learning tool and traditional textbook for biology students. Using Self- Determination Theory, we hypothesized that framing intrinsic goals in a need-supportive mobile learning app would enhance motivation, intentions, effort, and achievement, relative to extrinsic goals in a traditional tool (textbook). We randomized 128 undergraduate students learning to identify species in this 2 × 2 experiment. Using Bayesian analyses, results show a credible interaction effect between the mobile app and intrinsic goal-framing for intentions and identified regulation. For effort and achievement, the main effect of mobile learning is credible with substantial effect sizes. We argue that these findings are due to the need-supportive features within the mobile app and need-satisfying experience of pursuing intrinsic goals. For intrinsic motivation and amotivation, however, extrinsic goal-framing and intrinsic goal-framing, respectively, are credible and positive main effects, which is unexpected. More research is needed to investigate if this contradictory finding is replicated by others, or if students are pursuing extrinsic goals for autonomous motivation. Bayesian multigroup path analysis found across both groups that identified regulation predicted intentions, and intrinsic motivation predicted effort and achievement. For the extrinsic goal-framing group, amotivation predicted achievement, identified regulation predicted effort and achievement, and intrinsic motivation negatively predicted intentions. The results of our study provide theoretical implications for how goal-framing energizes different types of motivation within the mLearning context, and how manipulation within technology may have a differential effect on motivation than a physical agent. • Study investigating how goal-framing in technology increase motivation. • Study employing a Bayesian approach to the analyses. • A 2 × 2 randomized experimental design. • Study using Self-Determination Theory as theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

College dropout proves to be a critical problem in undergraduate programs that directly affects students and the related community, due to direct economic losses and significant social costs. This article addresses a systematic review of the literature on predictors of student dropout intention in higher education, focusing on scientific production in Q1 and Q2 journals from 2018 to 2023, performing a bibliometric review and analyzing the available empirical and theoretical data on the phenomenon of college dropout intention and its affecting factors. The bibliometric results and those related to predictors of dropout intention introduced in previous studies are presented. The largest number of researchers studying this phenomenon are from Germany, however, the United Kingdom is the country with the largest number of publications. Previous research can be grouped into two categories: studies analyzing psychological factors of dropout intention and those related to academic and social integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]