Motivation, accountability and self-regulation in blended learning for management education

Our case study research at one of the world’s highest ranked providers of online and blended learning for graduate management education confirms an emerging problem: At each of three interfaces within those delivery models, today’s digitally literate students are growing impatient with pedagogy that predates their routine use of contemporary digital technologies. For each of those three interfaces, we respond by proposing innovative instructional designs that draw upon cognitive and behavioral theories that explain and predict how humans learn. At the interface of self-directed learning (i.e., homework), we invoke motivation theory to propose the use of narrative animated videos (“NAVs”) as a cognitive/affective device for inducing immersion and enhancing satisfaction and learning outcomes. We summarize recent experimental results that confirm our theorizing. At the interface of team-based collaborative learning, we propose a problem-based- learning model that invokes accountability as a full mediator of user motivation and informs a peer assessment device that enables feedback and reflection in near-real time. At the interface where learning outcomes are measured, we propose the use of a self-assessment method that, by cultivating students’ capacity for self-regulation, enhances satisfaction and learning outcomes. For each summary proposal, we anticipate full theoretical and empirical studies.