Measuring Motivation and Tendencies Towards Self-directedness Within Information Technology in an Academic Workplace

Abstract

Advances in industry have placed a high demand on the workforce to maintain constant training. Some of the concerns that face administrators and supervisors are the best methods to keep current with new technology, how to implement these new advances in the environment, and how to best train their employees. While traditional methods have been to bring in trainers or to send the employee to an external site, more employers are relying on the employees to engage in self-directed learning. Research conducted in workforce education has examined formal education, motivation, organizational psychology, and training methods. While there is a growing trend in different fields contributing to self-directed literature, overall there is a lack of research addressing the employee’s self-directed learning efforts. This study examined the relationship of employee attributes, such as position, position type, and education level to self-directed learning. It also examined motivational, developmental, and educational theories and how they contributed to the learner’s engagement in self-directed learning. This study found no significance in position or position type in the selfregulated/ motivation, cognitive or social domains. This study also found that those with graduate degrees scored higher in the self-regulated and motivational domains than those without a graduate degree.