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Due to the autonomous nature of e-learning, learner control options should be provided to allow students to be more selective of content based on learning needs. Maintaining students’ situational interest should also be a goal in e-learning, as research shows that doing so leads to a greater chance of success. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between learner control and maintained situational interest in hopes of promoting better engagement through content selection based on learning needs.

This study analyzed survey responses from university students (n = 2,173) participating in a variety of massive online courses in South Korea to investigate the correlation between system-provided learner control and maintained situational interest. Additionally, the correlation between learner control and maintained situational interest was examined among demographic subsets including gender, age and grade level.

Results show a positive relationship between learner control and maintained situational interest, as well as a positive relationship between learner control and maintained situational interest among each demographic subset.

These results add to the current literature by promoting a practical way of maintaining students’ situational interest by providing them with the ability to control aspects of their own learning processes.

This study proposed a research model for verifying the structural relationships among users' perceived spatial presence (VR affordance), situational interest (affective factor) and behavioral attitudes (outcome) toward online virtual museum navigation. What role of situational interest plays in the relationships between spatial presence and outcomes was further examined.

There were 141 adults invited to participate in the research trials on the navigation of the online virtual museum which was established by 3D space capture techniques. This study conducted a series of PLS-SEM to analyze the participants' quantitative responses to the surveys of spatial presence, situational interest and attitudes.

The testing of reliability and validity for the measurement model of this study was satisfied. The significance of users' perceived situational interest: attention demand, instant enjoyment and exploration intention when navigating the online virtual museum with perceptions of spatial presence were identified. The mediation of situational interest in the relationships between spatial presence and behavioral attitudes were also verified.

For the practical design of desktop-based online virtual museums, it is suggested that more engaging strategies such as narrative storytelling and gamified interaction could be integrated to enhance users' situational interest including attention demand, instant enjoyment and exploration intention.

Through the examination of situational interest from multiple constructs, the research model of this study advanced the conceptual framework for understanding the consequences of VR affordance in online virtual museum navigation. The theoretical contribution to verifying the mediated role of situational interest was made.

The attractiveness of dynamic systems perspectives for expanding thinking about motivation, more particularly interest, lies in the central proposition that the individual is a self-organizing system in which “novel forms emerge without predetermination and become increasingly complex with development” (Lewis, 2000, p. 36). As Lewis further points out, “self-organization is not a single theory or model. Rather it is an idea … that promises coherent explanation in the study of pattern, change and novelty” (Lewis, 2000, p. 42). Thelen and Smith (2006) have proposed that self-organization is a “fundamental property of living things” and “by self-organization we mean that pattern and order emerge from the interactions of the components of a complex system without explicit instructions, either in the organism itself or from the environment” (p. 259). They suggest that understanding change and development concerns “the elaborate causal web between active individuals and their continually changing environments” (p. 271) and refer to specific units of organization within the system as “patterns assembled for task-specific purposes whose form and stability depended on both the immediate and more distant history of the system” (p. 284). To date, dynamic systems perspectives have been applied to a wide range of psychological phenomena, for example, the development of perceptual, motor and cognitive systems in infancy and early childhood (see e.g., Thelen & Smith, 2006). Jörg, Davis, and Nickmans (2007) have argued for a similar approach for the learning sciences. They propose a new complexity paradigm suggesting that more attention needs to be given to understanding the dynamics of the complex systems that make up the science of education and teaching.

As educators seek ways to enhance student motivation and improve achievement, promising advances are being made in adaptive approaches to instruction. Learning technologies are emerging that promote a high level of personalization of the learning experience. One type of personalization is context personalization, in which instruction is presented in the context of learners’ individual interests in areas like sports, music, and video games. Personalized contexts may elicit situational interest, which can in turn spur motivational and metacognitive states like positive affect and focused attention. Personalized contexts may also allow for concepts to become grounded in prior knowledge by fostering connections to everyday activity. In this Chapter, we discuss the theoretical, design, and implementation issues to consider when creating interventions that utilize context personalization to enhance motivation.

First, we provide an overview of context personalization as an instructional principle and outline the emerging evidence that personalization can enhance motivation and improve achievement. We then discuss the theory hypothesized to account for the effectiveness of context personalization and discuss the approaches to personalization interventions. We close by discussing some of the practical issues to consider when bridging the design and implementation of personalization interventions. Throughout the paper, we anchor our discussion to our own research which focuses on the use of context personalization in middle and high school mathematics.

The theoretical mechanisms through which context personalization enhances learning may include (1) eliciting positive affective reactions to the instruction, (2) fostering feelings of value for the instructional content through connections to valued personal interests, or (3) drawing upon prior funds of knowledge of the topic. We provide hypotheses for the relatedness of context personalization to triggering and maintaining situational interest, and explore potential drawbacks of personalization, considering research on seductive details, desirable difficulties, and authenticity of connections to prior knowledge. We further examine four approaches to personalized learning – “fill-in-the-blank” personalization, matching instruction to individual topic interests, group-level personalization, and utility-value interventions. These approaches vary in terms of the depth of the personalization – whether simple, shallow connections are made to interest topics, or deep, meaningful connections are made to learners’ actual experiences. The consideration of depth also interacts with grain size – whether content is personalized based on the broader interests of a group, or the individual experiences of a particular learner. And finally, personalization interventions can have different levels of ownership – an instructor can generate the personalized connections, the connections can be made by the curriculum designers, or learners can take an active role in personalizing their own learning. Finally, we discuss the practical implementation issues when bringing context personalization interventions into K-12 classrooms. Personalization can be logistically difficult to implement, given that learners hold a diverse array of interests, and may experience each of those interests differently. In addition, particular types of instructional content may show greater sensitivity when personalization is implemented, and personalization may be most helpful for learners with certain background characteristics.

Realizing the promise of personalized learning is an unsolved problem in education whose solution becomes ever more critical as we confront a new digital age. Context personalization has the potential to bring together several well-established strands of research on improving student learning – research on the development of interest, funds of knowledge, and utility value – into one powerful intervention.

Can mobile instant messaging (MIM) make people entering into the state of cognitive absorption (CA)? The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether CA can help explain users’ satisfaction during the process of MIM, while interactivity and interest are operated as determinants of CA as well as directly associated with satisfaction.

This study proposes a satisfaction model that is adapted from the CA theory to investigate MIMs users’ satisfaction with two determinants, interactivity and interest. Specifically, CA is operated as a second-order formative construct with four reflective dimensions, including curiosity, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment and temporal dissociation. Partial least square structural equation modeling was applied to evaluate the causal links of the model with the data collected from 472 LINE users who all had long using experience.

The results showed that CA in MIM, fueled by interactivity and interest, is positively related to satisfaction. Interactivity and interest themselves were also significantly associated with satisfaction. Among them, interactivity has the most influence on satisfaction, followed by interest and CA. Surprised, curiosity and focused immersion did not formative CA in MIM.

The present study focuses on user satisfaction of a specific MIM (LINE) and collects data from users within a specific region (Taiwan). Other researchers must take these constrains into consideration when referencing this study.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study which confirmed that people still enter into the state of CA when using MIM on smartphone, even though the using environment is drastically different from that on desktop. It indicates that prior theories in CA with desktop-based software are still applicable and serve as a basis for more studies in the mobile context to a certain extent, but other factors should also be considered. As interactivity and interest are conducive to CA, leading to user satisfaction, an MIM app can be more popular if the two factors are incorporated.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship among undergraduate students’ perception of faculty members’ and institutional support, undergraduate students’ appreciation of scientific skills and undergraduate students’ research endeavors.

A structural model was calculated to relate the variables. The sample included 1,882 undergraduate students from a State University located in the Southeast of Mexico. Undergraduate students came from different fields, and all of them that had taken at least 60 percent of their curricular credits.

The structural model suggests that faculty members’ and institutional support are positively related to undergraduate students’ appreciation of scientific skills and undergraduate students’ research endeavors. The findings suggest faculty members’ and institutional support are key factors to develop scientific research in undergraduate students. Therefore, the researchers argue that science programs taught in Mexican colleges and universities must endorse supportive practices among faculty members and institutions.

The cross-sectional design does not allow to set clear causal relationships among the explored variables. In addition, the sample included only one public university. Thus, further empirical research with research participants from different universities across the country is suggested. These improvements may enhance the strength of the proposed theoretical model.

Currently, there are a plethora of studies looking at students’ attitudes toward science. Those studies have also discussed the conditions and contexts that influence research practice among undergraduate students. Nonetheless, there are no studies known by the authors that include the set of variables and relationships considered in the present study.

Despite the plethora of studies looking at several conditions and contexts influencing undergraduate students’ attitudes toward science, no studies known by the authors have included the set of variables and relationships considered in the present study.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an interpretation of the lived experiences of salespersons’ work engagement and work-related flow and how these states are related.

A mixed-methods qualitative investigation on a sample of 14 salespeople from a large Australian-based consumer goods enterprise was conducted. Using interpretative phenomenological analyses and ethnographic content analyses the antecedents and conditions for salesperson work engagement and work-related flow were investigated.

The data showed that affective, cognitive and conative dimensions underpinned the experience of work engagement and work-related flow. Work engagement was interpreted as an aroused and self-regulated psychological state of energy, focus and striving aimed to address the situational and task relevant opportunities and demands encountered. Work-related flow was characterized by passion, absorption, eudaimonia and automatic self-regulation of goal pursuit.

The sample was from a single manufacturing organization with sales roles focussed primarily on business-to-business selling, and as such the generalizability of results to salespeople working in different contexts (e.g. retail sales, telesales) needs to be established.

The research helps sales managers to take more account of the conditions that foster salesperson engagement and flow.

This study represents one of the first attempts to interpret, compare and contrast the lived experience of salesperson work engagement with that of work-related flow. The study also adds to the relative paucity of research published on work engagement using qualitative methods.

In the last two decades, online computer-marked assignments (CMAs) have been widely used in accounting education. Although there is a growing body of research on this form of online assessment, most of the previous studies relied on small samples of respondents or focused on student self-report using survey methods. This exploratory mixed-method study aims to combine a quantitative analysis of learners’ academic performance on an online Financial Accounting course with a more in-depth exploration of learner experiences using qualitative methods. The quantitative findings suggest that student previous educational qualifications, age and experience of studying a similar subject are strongly associated with CMA completion, which is also linked to scores on other pieces of assessed work. The qualitative results show that from the learners’ perspective, diversifying assessment methods, introducing low-stakes assessment activities and creating opportunities for situational interest are viewed as key aspects of online CMA design. This paper concludes with discussing the implications of the study for designing and delivering online courses in accounting, particularly in the light of the growing popularity of massive open online courses (MOOCs).

The purpose of this paper is to identify when students choose their major and when students become interested in a career field, to devise a supply chain management (SCM) talent outreach strategy.

A survey was administered to undergraduate students in SCM classes, and the responses were explored through multinomial logistic regression analyses.

The paper revealed that interest in the career field is a major factor in choosing a college degree, among other factors. The timing of when a student chooses a major is influenced by interest in the field and whether or not the student lived abroad. The career field chosen is influenced by race, by whether or not the student lived abroad and by prior experience. Outreach strategies to attract new talent to supply chain-related fields should start prior to a student entering college.

Results are based on a survey research with a limited geographic coverage, and the research is limited to investigating student whose college major is other than SCM, leaving opportunities for further research where the college major is SCM.

The authors provide original findings that improve outreach strategies to attract next generation supply chain talent. They also further the development of theory for the determinants of when a college major is selected and when interest in a career field begins.

Challenges of teamwork in online classes may adversely affect students’ future attitudes toward teamwork. Further, there is a concern about whether online programs foster students’ teamwork skills. To answer these questions, the purpose of this paper is to compare online and face-to-face students’ attitudes toward teamwork, interest in learning teamwork skills and teamwork self-efficacy.

The authors developed a conceptual model explaining how students’ background, engagement in learning teamwork, teamwork self-efficacy and interest in learning teamwork affect attitudes toward teamwork and rigorously tested the model for a meaningful comparison between online and face-to-face students. Attitudes toward teamwork, teamwork interest and teamwork self-efficacy of 582 online and face-to-face students who attend the same academic program were compared.

The results suggest that online students have less positive attitudes towards teamwork compared to face-to-face students although online students have a higher level of teamwork self-efficacy. Therefore, online students’ relative less positive attitudes toward teamwork cannot be explained by the lack of engagement, teamwork skills or interest.

The homogeneity of the sample population is one of the limitations of the paper although it provides the opportunity for a comparative study of online and face-to-face students by controlling the majors.

Instructors should evaluate the appropriateness of team assignments while incorporating teamwork in online classes.

Concerns about online teamwork are discussed but have not been rigorously investigated in the literature. The authors conducted a comprehensive study involving 582 undergraduate students. The findings of this paper suggest that new approaches are needed to incorporate teamwork in online classes. The results also show that importance of building teamwork self-efficacy.