John M. Keller

John M. Keller, born in 1938, is an American educational psychologist whose work concerns motivation in educational settings and instructional design. He is best known for the ARCS model, which he introduced in 1979 and which names four components of learner motivation: attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction. Keller developed the model because he held that earlier behaviourist and cognitive approaches to instructional design paid too little attention to the learner's own motivation, and he paired the four components with strategies and a ten step design process that instructors can apply to their courses. After service in the Marine Corps and a doctorate in instructional systems technology at Indiana University Bloomington, he taught at Syracuse University and then at Florida State University, where he retired as emeritus professor of instructional technology and educational psychology in 2010.