The Role of Motivation in Online Professional Learning Strategies

Abstract

The importance of online learning has been highlighted by higher education, and online program administrators have looked for management strategies to establish competitive advantages through student satisfaction and loyalty. This research investigated the roles of various learning motivations (i.e., autonomous motivation, external motivation, need achievement, goal setting, social comparison, and reinforcement), perceived value, and satisfaction to predict students' loyalty toward an online program in the MBA context. Data were collected from online panel members of Qualtrics who were currently enrolled in online MBA programs in the United States. The empirical findings identify that perceived value was significantly influenced by external motivation, need achievement, goal setting, and reinforcement. MBA program satisfaction was positively affected by need achievement and reinforcement, and loyalty toward an MBA program was significantly influenced by perceived value and MBA program satisfaction. Overall, these results indicate the relative importance of each learning motivation for predicting online students' loyalty.