Educational Psychology / Unit 7 EDP 0643 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Designing with ARCS
The idea
Keller's ARCS model organizes motivational design into four parts. Attention covers perceptual arousal, like triggered situational interest; inquiry arousal, like maintained situational interest; and variability. Relevance connects the task to students' goals, values, authentic tasks and prior knowledge. Confidence draws on self-efficacy and expectancy, with control through choices and controllable attributions. Satisfaction depends on outcomes, extrinsic and intrinsic, that feel earned, since hollow rewards do not satisfy.
In practice
Worked example: a lesson on budgeting opens with a puzzle about where a paycheck goes, for attention; uses students' own spending goals, for relevance; starts with a problem every student can solve, for confidence; and ends with each student's finished budget, for satisfaction.
Where people slip
ARCS draws on theories from across this unit rather than replacing them: interest, expectancy-value, self-efficacy and attribution. Keller pairs the four parts with a design process of analysis, design, development and evaluation.
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