Motivation Autopsy

During the summer of 2024, I was a part of a work experience program as an assistant landscaper at the Pacific Forestry Centre. As part of my onboarding, I had to take several online courses, including workplace safety, ethics in governmental workplaces, and security awareness. Since these courses were mandatory, I had allotted time to complete them before I could start my fieldwork. I was the only person in my department taking these courses at the time; all my coworkers had done them previously and were able to provide support and guidance, which was very helpful as the course design was entirely asynchronous with little to no support provided to learners.

There are hundreds of courses offered by the Canadian School of Public Service, the platform used for all the mandatory and supplemental courses, many of which were related to my degree in some way, spiking intrinsic motivation. I was encouraged to enroll in a few extra courses for when we experienced bad weather and I wouldn’t be able to do any landscaping. The extra course I ended up focusing on was about Canada’s path to net-zero, which was quite fascinating because it followed a positive narrative that Canada wishes to present to its public servants.

However, despite my interest in the course contents and encouragement to pick up another course, there was little motivation to finish it since the only thing keeping me engaged was personal interest, and I no longer had consistent time to make my way through the course. My work term was only in the summer, and there weren’t many rainy days, so I didn’t have enough time to complete the complex and time-consuming course I decided on. This shift in how my working hours were spent is what inevitably led to me not completing the course even though the course met and supported personal goals of mine as an environmental studies student wishing to get a job in climate mitigation.

To overcome these hurdles, I could have advocated for more time in my schedule to complete the course or could have chosen a similar course that would have fit better with my schedule. Although the course only consisted of reading material, without any videos or engaging content, if these were increased, I would have moved along much quicker without sacrificing any learning.