Enhancement of Intrinsic Motivation Through the Integration of Autonomy-Mastery-Purpose Elements in the Design of Challenge Based Learning

In the development of tasks, motivation plays a relevant role. In particular, intrinsic motivation has been associated with persistence, creativity, and satisfaction during task development. It has been suggested that adding elements of autonomy, mastery, and purpose to the task can induce intrinsic motivation, but this relationship has not been explored during challenge-based learning. To evaluate the effect of these elements on motivation during challenge-based learning, students from the Immunology challenge block at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences of Tecnologico de Monterrey were invited to participate in the study. It was observed that after incorporating autonomy, mastery, and purpose in the challenge, students showed an increase in intrinsic motivation, regulated extrinsic motivation, and self-determination index, while external extrinsic motivation did not show changes and amotivation decreased. It was also observed that gamification did not modify the levels of intrinsic motivation. We conclude that include autonomy, mastery and purpose in challenge-based learning increase intrinsic regulation and reduce amotivation, suggesting that the incorporation of such components in the realm of education holds utmost significance. Additionally, we observed that gamification has no effects on the intrinsic motivation achieved after adding the elements of autonomy, mastery, and purpose.