Motivation
How did remote learning during COVID-19 affect student motivation?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Emergency online learning decreased students' self-driven motivation and feelings of social connection, though overall energy levels remained surprisingly stable for experienced students.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Supporting autonomy and satisfying basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) fosters intrinsic motivation, which in turn enhances subjective vitality and feelings of energy.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Sudden shifts to forced remote learning environments can significantly lower students' interest-driven motivation and peer connection, highlighting the fragility of motivation under environmental disruptions.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Separate pre-pandemic and 2020-lockdown student cohorts in Austria and Germany; SDT needs, motivation, vitality
- N
- N=2974 · 1,139 pre-pandemic and 1,835 remote-learning respondents
- Population
- University students in Austria and Germany before vs during emergency remote learning
- Outcome
- Autonomous motivation, relatedness, competence, autonomy, and vitality under emergency online learning versus pre-pandemic study
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Inspect source passages
How did remote learning during COVID-19 affect student motivation?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
1,139 students in the pre-pandemic cohort
Before March 2020, we collected data from 1,139 students from different study programs.
1,835 students in the remote-learning cohort
A sample of 1,835 students from eight universities and university colleges in Austria (56%) and Germany (44%) participated in the online survey.
Key findings
Students during remote learning reported significantly lower interest-driven motivation and a huge drop in social connection compared to students before the pandemic. Specifically, the sense of connection with peers saw a very large drop, with an effect size of 2.11. Unexpectedly, overall energy levels were slightly higher during remote learning, but this was not true for newly enrolled students, who struggled far more.
Methodology
Researchers compared survey responses from separate cohorts of university students in Austria and Germany. The pre-pandemic cohort consisted of 1,139 students, and the remote-learning cohort consisted of 1,835 students who completed surveys during the 2020 lockdown. Both cohorts reported on their motivational styles, their feelings of competence, autonomy, and relatedness, and their overall energy levels.
Limitations
To begin with, because the researchers compared different cohorts of students rather than tracking the same individuals over time, they cannot prove that the pandemic itself directly caused these psychological shifts. Additionally, the sample consisted largely of students majoring in education, the social sciences, or humanities, meaning these findings might not apply to other fields like engineering or natural sciences. Finally, the study only captured the initial months of forced remote learning, so it does not show how students' motivation or well-being might have changed as they adapted to online courses over a longer period.
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