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热门话题，尽管几乎没有人知道动机在一周内如何变化。基于对课堂中学生行为的观察，并考虑到日常生活中常用的表达方式（例如 TGIF、Motivation Monday），我们调查了每周动机如何变化以及每周重复的模式。连续 56 天从本科生那里收集数据，以允许检测动机周期并通过光谱分析将三角函数拟合到数据中。我们还研究了情绪和动机在一周内如何共同变化。我们的结果表明 (a) 动机遵循一个周周期的余弦函数——动机在周日开始增加，并且在一周初相对较高，周五逐渐减少，周六最低，(b) 每周情绪周期，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。