Promoting students' autonomous motivation for the ongoing curriculum using a 'Societal Impact Project' with basic psychological needs characteristics

PURPOSE: Autonomous motivation is important for university students, but it remains a challenge to stimulate their autonomous motivation for their curricula. We developed an extracurricular intervention (Societal Impact Project) with basic psychological needs supportive characteristics such as learning with self-defined problems relevant to curriculum and society, collaborative group work, and coaching by a teacher. This study aims at evaluating the intervention in fostering students' autonomous motivation for their regular curricula. METHODS: We conducted a quasi-experimental study, using between-group pre- and post-test design. Participants from the intervention and control group completed a survey before and after the intervention, which measured the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs, autonomous motivation, controlled motivation, enjoyment, value, and well-being within their regular curricula. We compared the post-test differences between the two groups while controlling for pre-test scores. RESULTS: Students in the intervention group had greater enjoyment in their regular curricula and perceived their regular curricula to have more value compared to students in the control group. The other variables did not differ significantly between the two groups in the post-test. CONCLUSION: The intervention is effective for improving students' enjoyment and perceived value in their regular curricula. The variables with non-significant differences indicate the difficulty to alter students' basic psychological needs and motivation in their regular curricula, even after participating in a long-term intervention.