This study aims to investigate whether individual interest and achievement-goal orientations facilitate learning and task performance. The effects of individual interest, achievement-goal orientation, and their interactions on rote learning, meaningful learning, and worthy performance were investigated. A hundred eighty-seven participants were grouped based on their individual interest levels and achievement-goal type toward the Critical Information Seeking and Reporting course. Participants’ initial goal orientations were fostered via experimental manipulations to create more distinctive achievement-goal groups. To obtain data regarding rote learning and meaningful learning, an achievement test and performance task were designed and developed respectively. Participants’ task performance score was divided by their cognitive effort score to calculate their worthy performance. The results indicate that a significant main effect of goal-orientation exists on rote learning, a significant interaction effect between individual interest and achievement goal-orientation exists on meaningful learning, significant main effects of both independent variables exist on worthy performance.
