Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation in an Interactive Engineering Game

Subject Areas : Human Computer Interaction and Interface

Rani Deepika Balavendran Joseph ¹ ( University of North Texas )
Alok Pal ² ( University of North Texas )
Jeanne Tunks ³ ( University of North Texas )
Gayatri Mehta ⁴ ( University of North Texas )

Received: 2018-10-27 Accepted : 2019-01-24 Published : 2019-02-01

Keywords: Competitive Play, Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Motivation, Electrical Engineering Game, Self-Regulated Play,

Abstract :

In this paper, we study intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation in players playing an electrical engineering gaming environment. We used UNTANGLED, a highly interactive game to conduct this study. This game is developed to solve complex mapping problem from electrical engineering using human intuitions. Our goal is to find whether there are differences in the ways anonymous players solved electrical engineering puzzles in an electronic gaming environment when motivated to play competitively, as compared to self-regulated play. For our experiments, we used puzzles from four games from UNTANGLED. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was calculated on participants’ scores, type of plays, number of plays, and time spent playing, as both self-regulated and competitive players. We also examined difference between the type of moves used by the competitive and self-regulated players. Our results support the theory of motivation as being internally embedded in learners. The results also demonstrate that a self-regulated learner does not require motivation to improve one’s performance.

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