The capacity to conduct research is essential for university graduates to survive and thrive in their future career. However, research methods courses have often been considered by students as "abstract", "uninteresting", and "hard". Thus, motivating students to engage in the process of learning research methods has become a crucial challenge for lecturers. This paper reports a study which incorporates students' prior (international) experiences into learning academic research in order to enhance relatedness, engagement, and a sense of empowerment. The findings indicate that student attitudes to learning research methods are closely related to the level of their engagement in the learning process. While intrinsic motivation appears to be a powerful driver for learning, this study argues that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are positively correlated, rather than orthogonal as proposed in some previous research. Outcomes of this study have implications for improving teaching and learning in research methods courses. (Contains 6 tables.)