Press "Enter" to skip to content

2.1 Reflective journal: What determines student motivation and attention? (graded activity) [± 30 minutes]

Learning outcome: 

  • LO1: Recall how memory processes such as problem-solving, encoding, retrieval, retention, and recall work.

What determines student motivation and attention?

Based on your experience with or intuition around student motivation and attention, which of the following factors do you think plays the biggest role in ensuring continued student motivation and attention?

Which factor do you think plays the biggest role in determining student motivation and attention?

Comprehension————37%

Communication————33%

Metacognition————27%

Memory————3%

Poll: Share your opinion on the most influential factor on student motivation and attention.


Once you have completed it, reflect on the results of the poll by considering your response, the responses of others, and the following questions:

  • Which factor did you select and why?
  • Which of the factors above do the majority of your peers think play the biggest role in maintaining student motivation and attention? 
  • Do you agree with their opinions? Why or why not?

Your reflection should not exceed 200 words.

All participants enrolled in GetSmarter Short Courses/Programs are required to refrain from acts of plagiarism or any other form of academic dishonesty. Assignments for this submission (as well as all future submissions) will be submitted to TurnitinTurnitin is a third party web-based tool that compares your work for textual similarities with a database of thousands of academic sources, student papers and websites to produce an originality report which our teaching teams use to investigate possible plagiarism. This is a compulsory exercise to inform decisions on whether an assignment’s content is plagiarised. To enable this process through Turnitin, you will be required to accept the Turnitin End User License Agreement (“EULA”) upon submission of your first assignment. You will only be required to accept the EULA once for this submission and all future submissions on this online campus.