Mulling Over Motivation

When we talk to parents and students about online learning, we often talk about motivation and the need for students to be somewhat self-motivated to succeed and finish the course. Some believe that intrinsic motivation, the ability to motivate from within, appears innately, but after more research, I am not sure that I agree. I began to think about motivation more after reading this article the other day. Education provides many extrinsic motivators, such as praise, grades, and other accolades. I believe that education can produce environments that would spark intrinsic motivation in many cases. Here are some of the pieces I have been looking at to understand motivation more:

Daniel Pink's TED Talk - 

Pink's book Drive explains motivation and how to improve motivation. In his talk, he discusses the idea of offering incentives and how that works with motivation in general.

Research Studying Motivation - This research on motivation highlights education specifically. I think some of the recommendations at the end, especially about making connections and establishing meaning, support the comment from our student surveys about what made a course worthwhile and meaningful. I know that Pearson put up the study, but the literature review remains a good read.

Switch - I enjoyed reading this book last year. The Heath brothers uploaded a lot of free resources on their site, including this pdf that speaks particularly to motivation. In the case of Switch, the motivation under discussion is motivation to change.

Picturing Practice - The Schlechty Center discusses engagement in several of their publications. According to Switch, making change and being motivated to change starts with small, manageable steps. This resource has templates and scenarios to work out those kind of steps.

Mindshift article - This article has some interesting strategies to activate the student brain to think towards success and be more motivated. While some of the first parts are about genuine choice, which we hear a lot, I like the part about writing about a successful ancestor before undertaking a daunting task and other ideas.

After reviewing these resources and more, my big take-aways about motivation included:
- Meaning and Relevance - I am more motivated to finish work that I find meaningful and / or relevant to my work, studies, family life, etc.
- Manageable Steps - Like in the discussion in gaming, motivation research emphasizes the importance of a "win," or a success early on based on a manageable and attainable goal. If the project seems to hard or to take too long, I may not be motivated to even get started.
- Celebrated Successes - These celebrations do not have to be huge or even public, but big successes should be recognized in some way.
- Connectedness - As a teacher, I need to communicate regularly and often. Showing I care helps students be motivated to participate more. Being attentive to their comments, offering specific feedback, and recognizing their efforts will help with motivation as well, especially if the student's intrinsic motivation is low.