Table 2 Motivating and demotivating reasons to prepare for seminars

To what extent do the following reasons improve your motivation to prepare the seminar assignments?

Mean (SD)

≥4 (%)

 I wanted to study the material before the upcoming multiple-choice exam

4.02 (0.93)

78.1

 I realize that seminar assignments will be a useful training for the end-of-course exam

3.93 (0.99)

72.6

 I wanted to compare my own answers to answers given by my peers

3.54 (1.09)

57.2

 I wanted to know whether I could complete the assignments on my own before discussing them with my peers

3.51 (1.03)

52.8

 I did not want to let my peers down

3.40 (1.00)

50.6

 I find the content of this course interesting

3.34 (0.99)

49.5

 I did not want to rely completely on the answers of my peers, because these might be incorrect or incomplete

3.25 (1.13)

47.3

 I did not want to be identified as a free-rider

3.08 (1.25)

45.1

 I knew that our teacher would not provide us the correct answers, therefore I wanted to find out what the correct answer was all by my self

2.63 (1.21)

27.5

 The seminar assignments were challenging and therefore I liked to prepare them

2.70 (0.98)

18.7

 I knew that our teacher would (informally) check whether I had prepared the assignments.

1.92 (1.09)

11.0

To what extent do the following reasons decrease your motivation to prepare the seminar assignments?

Mean (SD)

≥4 (%)

 I prefer to spend time on other (learning) activities than to prepare the assignments

3.20 (1.23)

46.2

 Seminar assignments are too difficult to prepare individually

2.97 (1.10)

33.0

 Assignments will be repeated twice during the seminar

 (once in discussion with peers and again during plenary discussion)

2.59 (1.19)

28.6

 I did not plan to go to the seminar

1.98 (1.28)

16.5

 I knew that the correct answer would be place on the wiki’s

2.09 (1.12)

14.3

 I planned to answers the assignment during the seminars

2.04 (1.11)

14.3

 To me the assignment were not available in time

1.88 (1.23)

14.3

 I knew the teacher would not provide us with answers or elucidations

2.06 (1.13)

12.2

 I am not interested in the content of this course

2.12 (1.11)

11.0

 My peer will immediately copy my answer

1.73 (1.11)

9.9

 My peers will not take my answers seriously

1.36 (0.81)

3.3

 I knew my peers would prepare the assignment, so there was no need to prepare them myself

1.63 (0.76)

2.2