Resumen de A Comparison Of Group And Individualized Motivational Messages Sent By SMS And E-Mail To Improve Student Achievement.
Damith Wickramanayake, Charles Schlosser
For many years, it has been generally accepted that communication and motivation affect students’ learning. Properly designed communication can enhance the students’ motivation to learn. This paper describes a study to determine whether a personalized Motivational Message System (MMS) is more effective than a group MMS, at the School of Computing and Information Technology situated on the campus of the University of Technology, Jamaica. A specific course (Business Information Management Systems) was selected to test whether the above statement is, in fact, true. Forty-four students were randomly selected and divided into two groups. All the students were part time, undergraduate, final (4th) year students. Two methods were used to deliver the MMS to students. Those methods were text messages on mobile phones (SMS) and email. E-mail was used to deliver the messages only when length of the message was more than 160 characters or the messages contained graphics. Keller’s (1983) ARCS model of motivation was used to design the MMS. The students’ grades for four measures were used as the motivational levels of students. Tests were spread from the middle to the end of the semester. No significant difference was found in averaged course grades between two groups. However, there was a significant difference between the two groups in attendance. Contrary to hypothesis, the group who received the group messages had a higher level of attendance than the group who received the personalized messages. This may have been because the students who are evening-part time have limited time. Hence, if their grades are better, they may tend not to attend the classes and utilize that time for something else they find important. Another explanation may be that students who received the personalized messages may have thought that they received personalized attention from the lecturer whether they came to classes or not, resulting in poor attendance.
