Guest post by Sean Speziale, Math Undergrad Group (sspeziale@uwaterloo.ca)
As I look upon the sleepy faces of my students, I try to remind myself that it’s 4:15 in the afternoon and week 12 of the term, to reassure myself that it’s not me or calculus that’s boring. Nevertheless I cannot help to think of what might motivate these students to embrace this opportunity for learning. It brought me back to July 2022 and the McMaster Conference on Education and Cognition (EdCog). There I attended a workshop led by Veronica Yan entitled Motivating Effective Learners, as well as a presentation by Kristy Robinson entitled Motivated Students and Motivating Classrooms: Socioemotional Processes as Opportunities for Student Success.
Many of us interested in such things as this blog will have read about and implemented strategies to help students learn. Some of us may have even explicitly told our students about such strategies and explained our pedagogical reasons for certain activities, assessments, etc. in a given course. So why do many students insist on doing the same set of practice problems three times instead of seeking out new problems? Why do they insist on cramming instead of spacing out those study sessions into shorter, more manageable chunks? Why do they passively re-read or highlight theorems and definitions? Well, it’s comfortable, reassuring. They may not know that the above strategies are ineffective. There is an anxiety associated with failing at problems. Instructors know that it takes failing at a lot of problems to know that failing at a lot of problems is the best way to succeed at solving problems. As instructors, it is our duty to embed this perspective into our students. That is, to reframe the experience of difficulty and increase the threshold for engaging.
Interestingly however, knowledge of effective learning strategies predicts only the intent to use such strategies. The actual usage is predicted by the perceived cost i.e. effort/time. Essentially, the students make a value judgment. In other words, we can educate them all we want about retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving etc., and they might find it very interesting and even intend on putting these things into practice, but ultimately it comes down to how much time they are willing to put into it. Effort is hard and time-consuming, and the only way students will put in this effort is if they are motivated.
So what will motivate students? Motivation must come from within. In that sense it matters relatively little what you tell students to do, but rather that you unlock in them an intrinsic desire to learn more effectively. By its nature, this will be sustained rather than transient, and will allow a transformative process to take place.
In order to do hard things, students need certain things from their instructor. They must perceive fairness and care from their instructor. They need to trust that what we’re asking them to do is for a good reason, so taking time to explain those reasons is time well spent. Low stakes formative activities can be particularly helpful, as the pain threshold for failure is much larger and so the students are more likely to buy in. If challenge can be balanced with opportunities for success, students will likewise respond positively. Our message to students must be to focus on growth and mastery, emphasizing the objective of learning rather than grades. And perhaps most importantly, we should encourage students to recognize this growth when it occurs and to attribute any success to their efforts, thus promoting a growth mindset.
Recently I’ve taken to saying to students after assigning a certain exercise or activity during lecture, “By the way, I want you to fail at this.” The first time there are a few confused looks. But when I tell them afterwards that by failing they will identify the most common misconception, and that once that hurdle is overcome they are on their way to understanding, they will appreciate the gift of discovery that they have received. This, I hope, will in turn motivate more of the discovery which is so integral to mathematics.
