Blog Post 1, Motivation

One of the suggestions that the book makes it to "design tasks of optimal difficulty" for students to create a intrinsically motivating learning environment. How do you do this? It seems to me like a classroom would have a lot of different levels of capability as far as difficult tasks go - in almost every classroom, some students will find the task you give easy, and others will find it difficult. How do you go about determining an "optimal difficulty"?

First of all, extrinsic motivation is better used for older students rather than younger. This is due to the fact that younger students have more of a zest for learning - they are more curious and interested in their environment and learning new things. Older students, however, tend to groan at hard tasks and would often rather take the easy way out (I still do!). Therefore, intrinsic motivation isn't found as much with older students, so extrinsic is used. Even the simple concept of grades is extrinsic motivation used for older students. I had tons of classes in high school I didn't care, but I wanted that reward of an A in the class, so I worked hard. Extrinsic motivation is also used well when the task is important, but doesn't interest students. For example, studying for my Theory midterm this weekend is something that I'm definitely not intrinsically motivated to do, but having a reward (hopefully a good grade) gives me the extrinsic motivation that I need. Extrinsic motivation can be useful in that it can create interest in certain activities. For example, I'm learning the flute right now for one of my classes, and I started off being extrinsically motivated to practice it - I want a good grade for my playing test. However, the more I practice it, the more I really like it, and now sometimes I get it out and practice it for fun - I'm intrinsically motivated. This can be a great tool for educators.

Extrinsic motivation can be used at the wrong time, however. Sometimes, if you use extrinsic motivation too much, people begin to believe that their success is due to the reward and not due to the effort they put in. Also, in a lot of cases, when you take away the reward, the motivation to do a task goes completely away. I remember in middle school, my best friend's parents would give her $10 for every A on her report card. Once she reached high school, her parents stopped doing it because she was "an adult", and her grade went WAY down because she had no motivation anymore. Her motivation to get good grades slowly became to receive money. Once that extrinsic motivation was gone, and she hadn't gained any intrinsic motivation to good grades, and therefore stopped caring. This can happen with extrinsic motivation if it's not used correctly. The Dweck article also brings up a good point about extrinsic motivation (praise, to be specific): you have to be careful what you're praising! Praising effort is much more important then praising intelligence: giving extrinsic motivation for effort will help students to gain intrinsic motivation, whereas praising for intelligence or ability can just cause them to feel better about themselves and want to look smarter. Extrinsic motivation can be a good tool, but it needs to be used wisely.