Motivation

Each semester there are students who don’t do well in our classes, no matter how hard we try to reach everyone.  Are these underperforming students, in your view, unable to learn the content or unmotivated to learn it (or some combination of both)? The following three articles address the motivation issue from different perspectives.

The first uses Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory, which says that three basic psychological needs affect motivation: 

• autonomy, 
• competence, and 
• relatedness. 

In it, Kelly gives suggestions for how to encourage autonomy, such as giving students choices over topics, content, or weight of grades for various projects.

In the second, Orlando focuses on the potential hazards of praising a student, arguing that praise can undermine rather than enhance performance and self-esteem because it leads the student recipients to believe that their intelligence is fixed, and thus not something that they can influence through action or effort (Carol Dweck’s concept of fixed vs. growth mindsets with respect to intelligence.) He argues that we need to praise students for their effort (“you have clearly put a lot of time and thought into this project and it shows”) and for their process (“I was impressed with your choice of research articles”)  and that we should focus on giving positive feedback (“here’s what you did well”) not praise (“this is a great paper.”)

The third discusses intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, offering nine strategies to move students from working to earn a passing grade to working because of love of subject, reminding us that students don’t move to higher-level thinking until lower-level needs are met.  In addition to creating a safe and supportive environment in our classrooms so as to meet students’ basic needs, Battista and Ruble remind us of the importance of  building activities into our courses that require students to draw on past experiences, share their learning expectations and goals, and reflect frequently on their performance to date and what they need to do to improve it.  They argue, “It is through the student's sense of accomplishment and vision for the future that intrinsic motivation is born. An approachable instructor can be the inspiration for this change in the student's mindset.”

How important do you see your role as motivator?  What has worked, or not worked, for you in this area?

Feedback Sandwiches and other Unhealthy Fare

Reading the first Faculty Focus article of the new year, “Is Praise Undermining Student Motivation?” caused me to rethink one of my long-held beliefs, the idea that it’s important to start a student comment by pointing out positives, then add the constructive feedback, and end on a positive and encouraging note.  Effective Commenting 101, right?  Well, apparently not.  According to Orlando,

The model is used under the belief that it keeps up the student’s spirits, but in reality it only confuses the message. The student reads only the positive at either end and ignores the real message in the middle that they need to hear in order to improve, or they recognize the dissonance between the conflicting messages and wonder how they really did. “Gee,” they say to themselves, “the beginning and the end tell me this is great, while the middle says that there are all sorts of problems, so which is it?” The feedback sandwich can even reduce respect for the instructor since students will soon learn that no matter what they hand in, the instructor will praise it along a predictable formula, making the feedback meaningless and something to be ignored.

The trick, apparently, is to praise the process rather than the product, the effort rather than the ability that went into the assignment. It’s all about seeing praise not as motivation but as a way to encourage student growth.

What do you think?  Do you use the feedback sandwich model?  How/where/when do you give feedback? What works for you and your students? 

Commenting on Student Papers: To Track or Not to Track

How best to comment on student papers is a perennial problem.  An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education last month entitled “Why I Don’t Use Track Changes on Students’ Papers” by Lucy Ferris caught my eye, mostly because I found myself disagreeing with lots of Ferris’s assertions.  I thought it might be an interesting topic to start off the 2015 “Teaching Matters” discussion. 

Ferris explains why she insists that her students submit hard copies of their papers for her grading and comments.  Her arguments against using “track changes” to comment on electronic papers have some validity: 

• She isn’t as tempted to correct small grammar and style issues, and when she does students can’t just click “accept” and make the correction without knowing why.
• Even with minimal corrections and inserted comments, the paper ends up looking, as she put it, “like a Jackson Pollock painting of colors, squiggly lines, and call-outs, a discouraging mess for the student to untangle and sort out.”
• It’s harder to encourage students by doing things like drawing arrows to link well-argued points and encourage students with a big “GREAT!!” circled and connected to those points.
• Students tend to read the comment point by point and can’t spread out the paper and get an overview of the whole. 

As someone who only grades electronic submissions, however, I would argue the benefits of electronic review: the greater legibility (printed words rather than my undecipherable scribbles), the additional space (comments can go on as long as you need them to; they aren’t constrained by needing to fit into a 1” margin), and the additional speed and forgiveness (I can type a lot more quickly than I write, plus I can change my mind and revise a comment after I think about it as often happens). 

I do agree, though, that using “track changes” to cross out students’ words and insert teachers’ words is not a good practice.  We don’t want to appropriate our students’ papers or their language. I usually put my grammar or style corrections in a side comment, hoping that it seems more respectful that way, sometimes using highlighting to point out a pattern of similar grammar issues after explaining it the first time.

What do you think?  Do you require hard copy or electronic submissions from your students?  Do you use “track changes” when you grade?   If so, how?  If not, why  not? What works well for you and the students in your classes?