blog post #1

The motivation autopsy activity reminds me of the online course that I took last semester from Coursera . The course was related to web-development focused on the backend technologies, as I really wanted to learn something extra so that I can improve my resume and apply for coops. At the beginning of the course, I was highly motivated as the course was self-paced and it also had some real-world problem-solving projects.

However, during that semester, I was taking four 300-level CSC courses. And managing labs, assignment, exams and tutorials left me with very little energy to focus on that external course I was doing. Initially, for the first two weeks it went well, but from the third week onward, assignment deadlines followed by midterm practice papers made it very difficult for me to catch up with course. However, course was online and self-paced, but it became too difficult for me to catch-up the course load after the third week. And gradually I started losing my motivation towards completing that course not because I lost interest in the course. But because it began to feel more like an extra workload

Now when I look back, I feel the real reason for disengagement was relevancy. Although the skills provided were valuable and could have helped me a lot. But at the same time course was not affecting my GPA and grade or degree requirements. I knew that leaving the course has no academic consequences, so I was easier for me to just leave the course when my university courses load got increased. I think this was the main reason why I didn’t push myself hard enough to complete the course.

Looking back now, several learner needs were not well supported. like autonomy was there but the content became more complex without sufficient guidance. Also, Relatedness was missing due to the lack of social interaction as it was online course(pre-recorded).

I think course could have been with some shorter modules, discord group or meet sessions for doubt resolving and some interactive exercises. This experience showed me that sustained motivation in technology-mediated learning depends not only on interest, but also on thoughtful design that fits learners’ real-life contexts.