Classroom carrots

Old people like me may be familiar with motivational analogies related to carrots and sticks. Young people, I have determined by noting the bewildered faces of my students when I make reference to these analogies, are not familiar with what carrots and sticks have to do with motivation. If you are also young, here is a brief explanation. Like horses or mules or other animals that people in ancient times (like the 1900s or Amish farms) might have used for various tasks, students can be motivated by making them move away from something that they want to avoid (hitting mules with sticks, reducing student grades for lack of attendance) or they can be motivated by making them move toward something that they want (putting a carrot in front of a mule or offering students bonus points for class participation).

As discussed by Patricia Hernandez on Kotaku, a new app called “Pocket Points” offers students carrots for avoiding the use of their phones in class. Hernandez writes that the app tracks how long students keep their phones locked during class and is in use at Cal State Chico and Penn State, though only 1,000 students have downloaded the app, so its use can’t be very pervasive at either campus. Of course, Hernandez notes that people may try to game the system and commenters have several suggestions for doing so.

Carrots may work, but they probably don’t leave the lasting impression of a stick, even if the stick is staged. That way students will know that you’re not a part of their system, man.

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“Like” Memoirs of a SLACer on Facebook to receive updates and links via your news feed. That’s a tasty carrot.

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Next time I’ll brush them longer

After a recent exam in which many of my students failed, I asked them to write a brief statement reflecting on what they could do differently before the next exam. The most common response by far was that they would study longer before the next exam. I don’t want to discourage students from studying, but I thought that this situation required an addendum to Anti-Procrastination Metaphor #2. As you probably don’t recall, this metaphor involves students brushing their teeth:

Imagine two people visit the dentist for a cleaning and are told to return in six months.  The first person brushes her teeth for two minutes twice a day (four total minutes per day) every day for six months, spending 12 total hours brushing her teeth between dentist appointments.  The second person does not brush her teeth at all for five months and 29 days but spends 12 hours brushing her teeth on the day before her dentist appointment.  Which person’s teeth would you rather have?

To this I would add:

After visiting the dentist and finding that her teeth were, in fact, covered in plaque and cavities, the second person vows to brush her teeth for 24 hours in the days immediately preceding her next dentist appointment while the first person continues to brush her teeth for two minutes twice a day. Which person’s teeth would you rather have? Why doesn’t doubling the amount of time spent brushing her teeth get the second person’s teeth as clean as the first person’s?

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Meet me halfway

When students don’t do well on exams I always encourage them to meet with me.  I don’t think there is anything particularly novel about this.  What I’ve found, though, is that the more students meet with me the less frustrated I am with them (and with myself).  Only a few of the students who failed a recent exam have come to meet with me, but each gave me insight into what went wrong that I would not have otherwise had.

Most students had not put forth the required effort, but the reasons for this varied widely.  One student, for example, had been working off campus over 50 hours per week leading up to the first exam.  Given that, it is no wonder that she didn’t do well.  When meeting with me she was confident that she would do better on the next exam because she has been able to reduce her hours to around 30 per week.  Another, who did not have the textbook until just after the first exam, reported being very excited by the topic of an upcoming assignment.

While I may still wish that my students were more motivated overall, these meetings allow me to see what else they have going on in their lives and reduce my personal frustration considerably.  Unfortunately, I suspect that these students are reluctant to meet with me because they fear punishment or don’t want to relive their poor grades (among other reasons) while I feel more like doling out punishment when they don’t meet with me.

At some point maybe I’ll have enough experience to assume that students are doing poorly because of external circumstances rather than because they are all lazy and uninterested in education.  Until then, I wish more students would meet me halfway.

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How often do you brush your teeth?

At the beginning of the month I shared an anti-procrastination metaphor that I picked up somewhere along the way.  In discussions with students since, however, I’ve found myself drawing on my recent dentist appointments (years without dental insurance cannot be reversed overnight).  It is likely more applicable to students’ daily lives than my previous example.

Imagine two people visit the dentist for a cleaning and are told to return in six months.  The first person brushes her teeth for two minutes twice a day (four total minutes per day) every day for six months, spending 12 total hours brushing her teeth between dentist appointments.  The second person does not brush her teeth at all for five months and 29 days but spends 12 hours brushing her teeth on the day before her dentist appointment.  Which person’s teeth would you rather have?

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Anti-procrastination metaphor #1

While I have an issue with chronic procrastination myself, this does not prevent me from encouraging my students to avoid procrastination in their own lives.  The result has been an effort to find metaphors that will encourage them to consider what would happen if they applied their academic work ethic to other areas of their lives.  (I am pretty sure that I borrowed the metaphor below from somebody else.)

Imagine that you have an infection and go to a doctor for treatment.  The doctor prescribes a daily medication and tells you to return in four weeks for reassessment.  Do you take the medication daily or wait until three weeks and six days have passed before downing the entire bottle of medication?

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