Abstract

Student motivation in higher education is a popular topic, though there is virtually nothing known about how motivation changes over the week. Based on observations of student behaviour in the classroom and considering popularly used expressions in everyday life (e.g. TGIF, Motivation Monday), we investigated how motivation changed over the week and patterns that repeated weekly. Data were collected from undergraduate students over 56 consecutive days to allow detection of motivation cycles and fit trigonometric functions to the data via spectral analysis. We also examined how mood and motivation covaried over the week. Our results indicated (a) motivation follows a cosine function with a weekly cycle – motivation begins to increase on Sunday and is relatively high early-week, tapers off on Friday, and is lowest on Saturday, (b) weekly cycles of mood, and (c) cyclical covariation between mood and motivation. Implications for research, students, and universities are discussed.

摘要

高等教育中的学生动机是一个受欢迎的话题，尽管对于动机如何在一周内变化几乎一无所知。基于对学生在课堂上的行为的观察，并考虑到日常生活中常用的表达方式（例如TGIF，星期一的动机），我们调查了动机在一周中的变化方式以及每周重复的方式。连续56天从本科生中收集数据，以便通过光谱分析检测动机周期并将三角函数拟合到数据中。我们还研究了一周中情绪和动力如何变化。我们的结果表明（a）动力遵循每周周期的余弦函数-动力在周日开始增加，并且在周初相对较高，在周五逐渐减少，在周六最低，（b）每周的情绪周期，以及（c）情绪和动机之间的周期性协变。讨论了对研究，学生和大学的影响。