January 2012 Volume 15 Number 1 - Educational Technology ...

y turning over the responsibility to the learners and giving them the opportunity to improve throughout the semester
of study.
The qualitative data provided a rich description of the users’ experience. The potential of the learning console to
enhance learners’ motivational self-regulation was indicated by the learners who evaluated the learning console at all
stages of the formative evaluation. They regarded the opportunity to continuously put in effort to improve and
evaluate their learning process as a useful facet of the learning console. They were keen on the way they were able to
negotiate their tasks and having them assessed and cumulatively added to their coursework. These features kept them
motivated to continue learning. In addition, the learning console provided a sense of achievement as the learners
were able to view their progress through the display of their accumulated points. These extrinsic benefits of the
learning console that were constantly mentioned by the learners supported similar findings by Chang (2003) and
Timmis and Cook (2001).
The survey indicated high mean scores for most of the questions. Learners rated highly the self-evaluation and
regulation of motivation aspects of the learning console. They confirmed that the learning console had the potential
to help them reflect on their learning process (M = 4.0, SD = 0.47), encourage their initiative to improve (M = 4.33,
SD = 0.67) and self-evaluate (M = 4.0, SD = 0.47), keep them motivated to continue learning (M = 3.9, SD = 0.74),
and provide a sense of achievement (M =3.8, SD = 0.79). The learners also rated highly on the learning console’s
potential to provide opportunities for enhanced learner-instructor interaction (M = 3.9, SD = 0.74). On the other
hand, learners did not highly rate the learning console’s potential to provide feedback at key points (M = 3.3, SD =
1.25).
Learners who fully utilized the learning console apparently experienced intrinsic benefits that revolved around the
freedom and opportunity to negotiate their ideas. Interestingly, the learners were mainly concerned about their own
performance rather than that of others. Competition with other learners, as indicated by one learner, was not the
motive for self-improving. Using terms employed by Kawachi (2003), the learner’s desire towards self-improvement
can generate personal intrinsic motivation while the freedom to work on a task of his/her choice can lead to academic
intrinsic motivation. Hence, the environmentally regulated motivation could lead to self-regulated motivation, should
scaffolding be directed upon motivational traits such as challenge, interest, relevance, confidence, satisfaction,
independence, and control.
The themes derived from the findings, however, illuminated a number of issues related to learners’ prior experience
and characteristics. The instructor was the learner’s motivation to log in. Dependence on the instructor was still
dominant, even though learners were adults entering their third semester of study. The groups of Malaysian learners
were observed to need coaxing, showed a lack of exigency, unfortunately, and were generally pleased with the scores
of their first test. Attempts to negotiate were observed later towards the end of the semester. Presupposing the
technical and Internet competency of the learners was one of the assumptions of the research that fell short. Despite
being in the online learning environment for some time, some of the learners were not comfortable with the web
environment. What the researcher gained most from this research is the possibility of using the learning console to
support both personalized learning and collaboration. This is undoubtedly a positive feature to deliberate on, in
response to the different characteristics of the Malaysian online distance learners.
Conclusions
This paper illustrated research that included the design, development, and formative evaluation of a support tool to
help solve the problem of sustaining motivation and enhancing the self-direction of online distance learners in a
Malaysian context.The learning console and its features was considered by the research participants as having the
potential to support both attributes; thus the design and development objectives were met. Although the level of use
of the learning console was below expectation, the researcher discovered significant issues of prior practice and
management of online learning that generated a revised set of design principles and implementation guidelines to
inform others in similar settings that may be employed in future research.
Scaffolding should be addressed early in the stage of utilization since there is evidence for the need of different types
and stages of scaffolding. The technical difficulties reported by some of the learners call for the provision of
technology scaffolding and procedural scaffolding that consists of guides on how to use the learning console. The
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