Design of Individual Feedback to Motivate Working Adults to Complete University Extension Courses

Abstract

While the demand for adult learners to acquire new skills is rising, the learning opportunities for social workers often end with a “certificate of attendance” award. As the educational providers do not confirm the skills acquired through such programs, the program quality is not guaranteed. In order to confirm skill acquisition, it is necessary to introduce post-learning assignments and strategies aimed at course completion (even after the course ends) to maintain participants’ motivation to continue learning. In an attempt to maintain and improve the participants’ motivation for completing the post-learning tasks, this research improved the design of individual feedback applied to the participants’ submitted learning outcomes in university extension courses. These included reports and worksheets, which were evaluated in order to gauge the improved individual feedback’s effectiveness. As a result, both the completion rates and the course evaluations improved. The open-ended responses to the questionnaire also suggested that introducing informational feedback and multiple opportunities for feedback increased the participants’ motivation to finish the course. Based on these results, we propose a design principle that incorporates individual feedback as a method for improving motivation for completing courses.