Adaptation of Keller's IMMS Questionnaire to Measure Undergraduate Class Motivation

Undergraduate education requires innovation to adapt to the learning needs and expectations of students. Over the years, a typical class has evolved to now include technologies and pedagogical tools like programming languages, personal computers, learning management systems, computer-aided design, simulators, advanced computation software, etc. Fortunately, there has been a concomitant increase in the assessment of the impact of adoption and use of such technologies on student motivation and learning. Several methodologies and tools have been developed to measure student motivation specifically, among which Keller's Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS) is renowned. The IMMS is comprehensive, but it is this attribute that limits its use in specific instances such as the one in an undergraduate class. With reducing attention spans characterizing younger adults who form a typical undergraduate class, we wished to adapt the IMMS methodology to get a higher response rate among other things while also not compromising on the study goals. The adapted IMMS questionnaire is abbreviated in that it has fewer questions that are more directed and defined. This adapted IMMS questionnaire was found to be reliable as tested on a sizable sample (n > 200) of undergraduate students. This study presents the details of the adaptation, reliability testing, and guidelines on further use and study of the adapted questionnaire.