Inspiring Students’ Motivation to Learn

1. Inspiring Students’ Motivation to Learn Robin Pappas Center for Teaching and Learning

2. Pre-Assessment: Habits of Mind

3. Introductions and Overview How did the difference in your motivation impact your learning? What made the difference in inspiring (or diminishing) your motivation to learn?

4. Motivation There are three things to remember about education. The first is motivation. The second one is motivation. The third one is motivation. (Terrel Bell, U.S. Secretary of Education, 1981-85) One thing that is most certain about the past as well as the future is the importance of motivation in the practice of education. (Maehr and Meyer, 1997) Motivation as an outcome is important to all students in the classroom all the time. (Ames, 1990)

5. Motivation: Definition Personal investment an individual has in reaching a desired state or outcome • Focuses on behaviors, not innate or fixed characteristics • Attends to processes and causes • Investment metaphor suggests all persons possess resources • May be seen in action taken and affect expressed Maehr and Meyer, 1997.

6. Motivation: 2 Central Concepts and Their Context WGAD?!? Values GOALS Expectancies Will it work out? Can I really do it?

7. Goals

8. Performance Goals versus Learning Goals Elliot, 1999; Elliot and McGregor, 2001; Valle et al., 2003; Ford, 1992

9. Expectancies • Outcome Expectancies: specific actions will bring about a desired outcome (Carver and Scheier, 1998) • Efficacy Expectancies: one is capable of identifying, organizing, initiating, and executing a course of action that will bring about a desired outcome (Bandura, 1997)

10. Attributions and Expectancy Habits of Mind pre-assessment • Stable (but not fixed) • Controllable (via own behaviors) • Temporary, i.e., subject to learner behavior Ames, 1990; Dweck and Leggett, 1988

11. Environment Less supportive More supportive

12. Environment and Motivation Rejecting • Hopeless • Rejecting • Fragile • Evading • Defiant • Evading • Motivated Adapted from Ambrose et al., How Learning Works, 2010.

13. To Establish Value • Connect material to students’ interests • Provide authentic, real-world tasks • Show relevance between content and students’ current academic lives • Demonstrate relevance of higher-level skills to students’ professional lives • Identify and reward what you value (syllabus, class discussion/lecture, feedback, modeling, assessments aligned to course objectives) • Show your own passion and enthusiasm for the discipline

14. To Build Positive Expectancies • Ensure alignment of learning objectives, assessments, and instructional strategies • Identify appropriate level of challenge • Create assessments that provide an appropriate level of challenge • Provide early success opportunities • Articulate expectations: desired learning for the course and what students are expected to do to demonstrate that learning • Provide rubrics • Describe effective study strategies

15. To Build Value and Expectancy • Provide flexibility and control • Give students opportunities to reflect • Attend explicitly to course climate

16. Course Climate • Intellectual • Social • Emotional • Physical

17. Course Climate Marginalizing Centralizing Explicit Implicit Implicit Explicit De Surra and Church, 1994

18. Course Climate—Content Exclusive Curriculum Exceptional Outsider Transformed Curriculum Marginalizing Centralizing Explicit Implicit Implicit Explicit De Surra and Church, 1994; Marchesani and Adams, 1992

19. Establishing and Maintaining Supportive Course Climate • Work across cultures and use examples, etc., to relate to people from diverse backgrounds and statuses • Establish ground rules for interaction • Use syllabus and first day of class to set tone for climate • Set up processes to get feedback on climate Ambrose et al., 2010; Ames, 1990