“What's in it for me?”: Increasing content relevance to enhance students' motivation

Abstract

Frequently, students are skeptical of the significance of the material taught to them in the classroom. A question they often pose to teachers is “What's in it for me?” Making content relevant to students' personal and career goals addresses these concerns. A scale to measure content relevance in the classroom was developed, factor analyzed, and determined to be a valid and reliable unidimensional instrument. Making content relevant to students' personal and career goals was hypothesized to be a factor, in addition to immediacy, that increases students' state motivation. Relevance was found to be associated with state motivation to study. In addition, relevance accounted for a significant amount of variance in state motivation after taking verbal and nonverbal immediacy into consideration.