ARCS Model

Theoretical Foundation

The acronym, ARCS, refers to a set of categories (attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction) of motivational concepts. These were derived by using a qualitative cluster analysis to group concepts with similar attributes, and together they provide a synthesis of motivational factors. The category of attention includes concepts such as curiosity, arousal, sensation seeking, and variability that explain how to obtain and sustain learner attention. Relevance refers to variables that explain how to build connections between the instructional content and the learner’s interests. These include such things as the need for achievement, goal orientation, and fear of failure. The category of confidence, which is currently a popular area of research, includes self-efficacy, learned helplessness, attribution theory, and self-determination. Satisfaction includes concepts that help explain how people feel about their learning experience and whether they have continuing motivation for learning. Variables include reinforcement theory, intrinsic motivation, and equity theory. The validity of this structure has been established by Bahia Naime-Diffenbach’s research on the differential [Page 39]effects of specific treatments on the motivational attitudes of learners and by Ruth Small and Michael Gluck who used a magnitude scaling approach to verifying the independence of the four categories.

The Design Process

These concepts provide a basis for identifying learners’ motivational profiles regarding their attitudes toward learning a particular topic as well as to the motivational properties of other parts of their learning environments such as instructor characteristics, the methods of instruction, and the delivery system. This is done by means of a motivational design process that contains 10 steps:

• 1.
  Obtain course information.
• 2.
  Obtain audience information.
• 3.
  Analyze audience.
• 4.
  Analyze other course elements.
• 5.
  List objectives and assessments.
• 6.
  List potential tactics.
• 7.
  Select and design tactics.
• 8.
  Integrate with instruction.
• 9.
  Select and develop materials.
• 10.
  Evaluate and revise.

For each of these steps, the ARCS model includes guidance for the types of information to collect and produce, templates that serve as guides for documenting results, and worked examples. A unique feature of this design process within the literature on motivation and learning is the emphasis and guidance in Steps 3 and 4 to identify specific motivational deficits in the learners and the learning environment. These deficits provide the basis for generating potential motivational tactics in Step 6 followed by a critical review of possible tactics and then making final selections in Step 7. The reason for these two design steps is that different cognitive processes are involved in each. Step 6 benefits from an uncritical, brainstorming approach to generating ideas without regard to their feasibility. This helps facilitate creative thinking. In Step 7, a critical analysis based on feasibility and other factors leads to the final selections.

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