Using a Queer History App Increases Subjective Value to Learn About Minority History

• In Event: Motivation in Education SIG Poster Session: The Role of Students' and Teachers' Competence Beliefs and Value Beliefs

Abstract

Motivation is a key psychological process because of the role it plays in supporting learning. This paper addresses gaps in the literature concerning the role of motivation in learning minority history using mobile apps. In a pretest-posttest randomized control experiment, we examined whether undergraduate students (N = 114) who used a mobile queer history (QH) app would increase their subjective value toward QH. We found that students randomly assigned to the QH app condition reported a statistically significant increase in subjective value toward learning about QH. Further, we found that students’ increase of subjective QH value statistically significantly contributed to explaining why students’ in the QH app condition increased their QH knowledge.

Authors

• Jason Matthew Harley, McGill University

• Nigel Mantou Lou, University of Victoria

• Byunghoon Tony Ahn, McGill University

• Yang Liu, University of Alberta