C-PAD Shares #9, May 2023
Featured Theme: Increasing Student Motivation
At the start of every course, a recurring teaching challenge looms fresh: How can I connect to these students? How interested and motivated are they, and what can I do to strengthen their motivation? These two articles and the Solve a Teaching Problem site at Carnegie Mellon provide solid advice for meeting this common challenge knowledgably.
Faculty Focus, June 6, 2018
By Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Professor emerita of teaching and learning at Penn State Berks and winner of Penn State’s Milton S. Eisenhower award for distinguished teaching in 2005.
Article reading time: 4 minutes
This distinguished scholar and author does us all a great service by summarizing five generalizations and their implications from Paul Pintrich’s meta-analysis on motivation, “A motivational science perspective on the role of student motivation in learning and teaching contexts”.1 Dr. Weimer affirms the authoritative value of the article, calling it “…the piece I most often see referenced when it comes to what’s known about student motivation. Subsequent research continues to confirm the generalizations reported in it.”2
The first generalization deals with a student’s beliefs regarding their own competence and how adaptable those beliefs are. Simply put, motivation follows belief. The more strongly students believe they possess required abilities leading to success, the greater their effort, persistence, and other motivated behaviors. The author notes the key implications that Pintrich identified as flowing from this generalization:
- Implication 1: Teachers must strive to provide accurate and specific feedback.
- Implication 2: Task difficulty needs to hit a “sweet spot”—challenging, but neither too difficult nor too easy, both of which are demotivating.
Read on to learn the other four generalizations and the teaching implications associated with them.
Carnegie Mellon University, The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation
In a unique and highly commendable approach, the Eberly Center has created a truly useful resource here, the Solve a Teaching Problem site. Intended as a supplement to their one-on-one consultations, this diagnostic site is loaded with practical advice tailored to particular aspects of common teaching challenges.
In Step 1, you identify the problem you are encountering. In Step 2, you identify one or more possible causes or reasons from the list they provide. When you follow a reason link, you come to a Step 3 page that describes strategies proven to help with this issue for this reason. By exploring multiple causes and the several strategies provided for each, you can customize a robust solution to your teaching challenges.
For example, if we have identified that students lack interest or motivation, six possible reasons or causes are provided. If we follow the first one, that “students see little value in the course or its content”, we see seven potential strategies for dealing with this issue, including “clearly articulate learning goals” and “connect to student’s personal interests.” For each of those, in a single paragraph of about 150 words, the relevant learning principle(s) are provided, along with several examples of how this strategy could be applied in a variety of academic disciplines.
Really, you have to see this one! Take a minute and follow the trails wherever they lead. You might find new insight and excellent advice that solve your teaching problem.
Kennesaw State University, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
Article reading time: 7 minutes
The article asserts that there is a common disconnect between what instructors believe motivates student learning versus what actually motivates them. The bottom line? Three factors, working together, are what drive motivation: goals/values, self-efficacy, and a supportive environment.
Goals and Values
Whereas instructors want students to strive toward mastery goals or learning goals, students tend to focus on performance goals. How do we bridge this divide? The author argues that emphasizing a performance mindset is the wrong approach; instead, instructors should “stack” three kinds of values (attainment, intrinsic, and instrumental) that serve to heighten student motivation, facilitate mastery learning, and position students to reach their performance goals.
Self-Efficacy
Echoing a key finding already discussed above, student motivation increases the more they believe they will perform successfully. The instructor’s task is to help students move from a “predetermined” mindset to a “growth” mindset.
Supportive Environment
Also consider your class environment. Do they know that you care about them and their learning? Do they feel that they can reach out to you for help? Is there a growing sense of community in the classroom over time? An unsupportive environment can really kill motivation.
The article concludes with several strategies to establish value and enhance student self-efficacy.
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That’s it for this month, and this academic year. The next edition of C-PAD Shares will come out In September. Hopefully you found something you can use to heighten student motivation in your next class, whether this summer or this fall.
Weimer, M. (2019, November 25). Five keys to motivating students. Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. Retrieved April 19, 2023, from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-classroom-management/five-keys-student-motivation/
Pintrich, P. R. (2003). A motivational science perspective on the role of student motivation in learning and teaching contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95 (4), 667-686.