Measuring the motivational climate in an online course: A case study using an online survey tool to promote data-driven decisions

Creating a positive motivational climate in an online course can engage students in their learning. Instructors may be able to better manage their courses and create a positive motivational climate if they implement online survey tools that allow them to assess the motivational climate of their courses. Teachers and researchers have documented that five student perceptions—empowerment, usefulness, success, interest, and caring—are particularly important for creating a positive motivational climate and are associated with students’ engagement and evaluations of teaching. In this paper, we describe a case study of an instructor who used an online survey tool to assess the motivational climate in his online asynchronous course over time. He then used the feedback to consider improvements that he could make to his course in the future. In addition, we describe how this process of using the online survey tool could be used by instructors to transform education.