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Abstracts

Maria Tulis-Oswald: Learn to fail, don’t fail to learn! The importance of motivation for learning from setbacks

Abstract:  Failure is currently seen as key to innovation in some spheres. Indeed, errors may be a powerful learning tool – especially in academic learning contexts – but only if learners are able to deal with their errors in an adaptive and reflexive manner. We need to know the dynamics of the processes and skills needed to learn effectively from mistakes and errors. In this presentation, I will review different perspectives on error-related learning and the importance whether an error is interpreted as failure or as learning opportunity. Based on a theoretical framework and empirical evidence my talk will act as a springboard for discussion: (How) can we design motivation and learning environments to support „learning by failing“?

Sebastian Deterding: Designing for Motivation: Bridging the Gap Between Psychology and Design Practice

Abstract: As everyday life is increasingly mediated by digital applications and services, motivation has become a new core challenge for design: How do we design our digital lifeworld to motivate people to live more healthily, save energy, learn, work, play, commune, or participate in politics? Naturally, designers turned to psychological research for guidance -- but often left unsatisfied, finding psychological research too abstract or analytic to be useful. As a result, small multidisciplinary fields like persuasive technology, design for behavior change, nudging, or gamification emerged that tried to translate between psychology and design, yet often with questionable results. In this keynote, I will reflect on my own research on applied game design and my experience traversing academia and industry to tease out some of the epistemic differences between psychological and design knowledge that make translating between them difficult, and suggest some ways forward towards a principled and practical science of motivational design.

Short Bio: Sebastian Deterding is a designer and researcher working on design for human flourishing. He is a senior research fellow at the Digital Creativity Labs at the University of York. Founder and principal designer of the design agency coding conduct, he has created engaging experiences touching millions of users for clients including the BBC, BMW, Deutsche Telekom, KLM, and numerous startups. He has keynoted and presented at venues including CHI, Design and Emotion, GDC, Google, Lift, MIT Media Lab, IDEO, UX London, and Web Directions. He is founder of the Gamification Research Network, and co-editor of “The Gameful World” (MIT Press, 2015). He lives online at codingconduct.cc.

Kou Murayama: Interest as a complementary reward for extrinsic incentives: Its nature, long-term consequences, and metamotivational belief

Abstract: Interest constitutes a fundamental part of students' learning and behaviour but its nature has still been contentious. The current presentation addresses a preliminary theory called "Interest as a complementary reward for extrinsic incentives". The basic idea is simple --- the theory posits that interest involves reward processes that are internally generated when extrinsic incentives are not available. Extrinsic incentives play an important role to shape our behavior, but extrinsic incentives are not always available, especially when someone is engaged in higher-order activities (e.g., reasoning, creativity). The theory posits that, in the evolutionary process, humans (and other higher organisms) acquired the ability to self-generate rewards to sustain their behavior when extrinsic incentives are not available and this is what we naively call, interest. Based on this idea, I will argue that (1) interest involves internal reward processing, (2) the effect of interest accumulates over time, and (3) the rewarding process is elicited only when extrinsic incentives are not explicitly available. With the combined use of survey, experimental, and neuroimaging methodologies, and with the focus on long-term consequences and metamotivational belief of interest, I will present some preliminary evidence supporting these ideas.

Sanna Järvelä: Can motivation be designed? – researching and supporting motivation for 21st century learning

Abstract: Learning in and for the 21st century requires motivational competence in individual and collaborative learning settings. Today, it is more important than ever to help learners to become aware of their strengths and weaknesses in a learning situation, so as to help them develop their will and skill for learning and support them deepen their motivation and engagement to learn throughout their lives.
Are our theories and concepts in motivation relevant for designing motivation? Yes – but there is a need to operationalize our theoretical understanding for providing support for motivation. In this talk I will discuss our progress in motivation research especially aiming to target motivation as multi-layered and situated phenomena and provide tools and prompts for both researching and supporting motivation.

Short CV: Sanna Järvelä (https://sannajarvela.wordpress.com) is a professor in the field of learning and educational technology and a head of the Learning and Educational Technology Research Unit (LET) (http://www.oulu.fi/let) in the Department of Educational Sciences, University of Oulu, Finland. Järvelä and her research group is internationally known from theoretical advancement of motivation as a contextual phenomenon and of social aspects of self-regulated learning. Her research work has strong contribution to the methodological development of process oriented research methods in the field of learning and collaboration and recently applying of multimodal methods in learning research. She has been an associate editor of Learning and Instruction (2010-2014) and is currently is the associate editor of Frontline Learning Research and International Journal of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning.  She is the current EARLI (European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction) president.  In 2015 Järvelä was invited to the member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and she was the Francqui Chair holder at the Gent University Belgium for the year 2016.  Järvelä has published more than 100 scientific papers in international refereed journals and about 50 book chapters and three edited books.