Motivation and emotion/Textbook/Preface

Welcome to this free and open textbook for the psychological study of motivation and emotion.

Motivation and emotion are core topics in undergraduate psychology teaching around the world. This book focuses on applied theory and research topics in motivation and emotion. Chapter foci and content were initially developed by undergraduate psychology participants at the University of Canberra in consultation with the lecturer/editor, James Neill during the second half of 2010. Whilst the book may be useful as a whole, each individual chapter is also designed to stand alone.

This first edition was developed through a participant-authored, instructor-edited, open wiki collaboration learning and assessment exercise during Semester 2, 2010 (August-November). Approximately 80 participants enrolled initially and three months later 70 submitted chapters. Participants created Wikiversity accounts of their own preference, thus some used real names and some used other account names. Participants learnt how to use Wikiversity through demonstrations and through developing individual e-portfolios (worth 30% of the unit). Each participant selected or negotiated a textbook chapter topic (50%) and made a 5 minute multimedia recording of his/her textbook chapters (20%).

The plan for the future is to continue developing the quality of content on current topics and to develop new topics in collaboration with new participant cohorts. In this way, it is hoped to develop a high-quality open textbook which can supplement and eventually replace the reliance on commercial textbooks. At the very least it is hoped that this textbook project provides a practical demonstration and example of the potential for the development of open textbooks as a learning and assessment exercise in higher education. This is also an example of open academia in action. {{Hide in print|