Mods 16/17 Blog1

Something I was confused about was the difference between mastery-approach goals and performance approached goals, as well as mastery-avoidance and performance avoidance.

• When are INTRINSIC forms of motivation most beneficial or appropriate, compared to extrinsic forms? What do they offer?

Intrinsic forms are most beneficial when the students are actually interested and willing to go the extra mile, out of sheer curiosity and interest, not because they have to. Something to encourage that would be outside of class projects, with not very detailed instructions, allowing the student to take it the way they want and find a subtopic of the matter that they can be interested it. The students want to seek out information about the topic not because of the grade they will achieve, but just for their own knowledge. It is their reward to learn, not the grade they'd get. This is why ungraded homework can really show who is intrinsically interested or not. No one is pushing the student to do it, but if they do, it is because they want to. It is kind of like my homework for my statistics class. It is ungraded and no one checks it. As a result, I never do it. I am not interested at all and I need extrinsic forms to complete it. Students who are intrinsically interested actually do the homework. Intrinsic forms can make students feel better about themselves too and empower them because they are doing work for themselves, and not for anyone else.

• Even though intrinsic motivation describes something internal, it's something that CAN be affected by external factors, like teachers. Discuss some specific ways that you can increase intrinsic forms of motivation for your students. (For example, are you attributing success/failure to factors they can control or factors that are inherent?)

I would want to connect the information to something that would grab the interests of the students and make them want to learn it. Using visuals or movies to describe something and then giving some sort of homework on it to allow the students to take their own time to look up more information. I would maybe make it optional and then have a group discussion the next day. The students who want to participate and talk about the topic that interests them will be more intrinsically motivated to look up information. They don't have to do it, but it would instill a curiosity in them, making them more likely to want to find out the information. I would keep the classroom in a very positive environment, and keep long lectures to a minimum, which tends to shut off some students. This increases interest and can be more of an intrinsic motivator. I would want my students to feel empowered about the work they do, so they can feel that way about the next assignments.