Helping students to see the value in what they’re learning
Intended Learning Outcomes
- Understand sources of motivation for students and their impact
- Apply strategies to increase student motivation
Facilitation Notes
Begin by asking TAs to brainstorm what motivates students to learn something new. Folks can think about this in general or draw from personal experience. You can do this in a free form discussion setting, or use an anonymous polling platform.
While there are many factors that contribute to student motivation and many different theories and frameworks explaining motivation, this workshop focuses on the expectancy-value theory of motivation and three actionable areas for TAs to target in their teaching: Confidence, Context, and Choice. It can be helpful to share a personal example of how these factors have contributed to motivation in your own learning. Example:
Growing up, history courses in school were always difficult for me. I didn’t think I was any good at writing, and I didn’t see the relevance of remembering all those past events and dates. However, when given the option to write a history research paper on any topic of my choosing, I was able to find something that piqued my interest. I chose to write the paper on the Human genome project, a topic which I was passionate about given my interest in biology and genetics. The choice that my teacher gave me allowed me to 1) see the direct value in completing the task and 2) gave me more confidence to succeed because I was writing about something I was more familiar with.
Confidence – How can we promote students’ beliefs that they can succeed? Have TAs reflect on previous discussions in the pedagogy series surrounding actions that promote student practice, support, and feedback. How might these actions impact student confidence?
Context – How can we reinforce the value of learning the material? Engage TAs in a discussion about where value comes from. Four possible examples are given (from Eccles (2009) Who Am I and What Am I Going to Do With My Life? Personal and Collective Identities as Motivators of Action). Challenge TAs to think about which of these areas are possible to target as teachers. To explore the concept of utility value in greater depth, use the data from Canning & Harackiewicz (2015) Teach It, Don’t Preach It: The Differential Effects of Directly Communicated and Self-Generated Utility–Value Information. End the discussion of context by providing an example of a utility value intervention from the literature (Harackiewicz et al. (2016) Closing Achievement Gaps with a Utility-Value Intervention: Disentangling Race and Social Class), emphasizing its particular impact on students from under-represented or first-generation backgrounds.
Choice: Present TAs with two different scenarios that empower student choice in the classroom. Have TAs read through these on their own and then prompt a discussion about whether they think these would be effective and why.
Leave at least ten minutes for TAs to come up with one concrete idea of how they can foster student motivation in their next recitation. Ask folks to share with the group or in pairs. Close with an Exit Ticket that prompts folks to think about what they are taking away and what they still have questions about.
Files
Session 8 Slides: Making Materials Relevant to Motivate Students (PDF)
