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appointments whenever you have the opportunity. Try to be prepared for meetings; take along some work or some recent feedback that you have received, and ask how you can develop and improve. At the next meeting, talk about the actions you took and whether they helped, and have some more questions ready to move you on to the next step. As you progress through your course, your tutor will get to know you better, and will gain an understanding of what works for you, to support you and help you to succeed.

Activity

Think about two different topics that you are studying at the moment. Choose one that you are enjoying, and one that you find more difficult to engage with. Read back through the explanation of the MUSIC model, above, and reflect on:  How does the MUSIC model explain your motivation for the topic you find engaging?  How does it explain your lack of motivation for the topic you find less engaging?  Does your behaviour differ for the two topics? For example, do you spend more time reading or thinking about one topic, and are you more likely to skip class for the other topic?  Take control – what can you do to increase your own motivation, by thinking about the MUSIC model? According to Jones (2009), you are more likely to attend classes, participate in discussions, complete assessments and engage in independent study if you are motivated by all of the different components of the MUSIC model (although you don’t need every component to be present for every learning experience). All of these behaviours make you more likely to achieve good grades and succeed academically, so it is worthwhile finding ways to increase your own intrinsic motivation. Approaches to Learning As we have seen, our motivations influence our behaviours, and so the extent to which we are intrinsically motivated to learn can affect how we approach learning opportunities. An early study to investigate this was carried out by Marton and Säljö (1976) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Marton and Säljö asked their students to read an article, and to answer questions about how interesting they found it, and what important ideas they had discovered. They transcribed the students’ conversations, and carried out a qualitative analysis of the transcripts. The analysis suggested that students took one of two different approaches. They could either be categorised as surface learners, which meant that they tried to memorise the content of the article without questioning it, or they could be categorised as deep learners, who thought critically and reflectively about the content of the article, and in so doing developed a fuller understanding of the issues and the reasoning behind the viewpoints within the article. Deep learners were described as interested in the article, and tried to apply the content to their own experiences and knowledge from other learning experiences. Reflecting on what we have learned already in this chapter, you could argue

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