An Affective Assessment Intervention to Improve the Motivational Climate in Courses

The motivational climate and student engagement within courses are important for instructors to consider during the instructional design process because they can affect student learning. To help instructors improve the motivational climate and student engagement within their courses, we implemented an affective assessment intervention within the first- and second-year courses in a US college of veterinary medicine. Based on the MUSIC Model of Motivation Theory, the intervention was administered near the end of the courses, and the results were presented to the course instructors in an attempt to improve the motivational climate within the courses the following year. The purpose of this article is to describe the intervention, present a case study based on one of the courses, and explain the lessons learned from implementing this intervention. The intervention involved administering an online questionnaire with affective items to students in 18 veterinary medicine courses over 2 years and sharing the results with the instructors. The assessment measured the motivational climate by assessing students’ perceptions of empowerment/autonomy, usefulness, success, interest, and caring within their courses because these perceptions have been shown to be related to students’ engagement. Based on the assessment results, the instructors made changes to their instruction the following year and students were surveyed again as the intervention cycle was repeated. One of the lessons learned was that the results from the student survey were useful to instructors; therefore, this freely available assessment tool may also be useful to other instructors in higher education.