Intrinsic Motivation

This is one of my reflections from my class, Leading Change: Go Beyond Gamification with Gameful Learning.

Prompt:
Think about your own work/teaching/leadership context; in what ways are you tapping into your learners' intrinsic motivations? Where are you (perhaps) demotivating your learners?

Response:
My students receive choices, though not as often as I would like. In teaching history, I focus on the skills more so than on specific facts. For example, when discussing the Civil Rights Movement, my students must discuss individuals such as MLK Jr., but I give them choices in other aspects to research (Fannie Lou Hamer, Claudette Colvin, etc.).

While completing a short research project, students are also given choices in the media that they use to create their project. They must use each project type at least once during the school year, but they choose the order in which they would like to complete them. For example, they have choices (documentary, podcast, poster, infographic, website, etc.) and they can only choose one media to use for each project. They can also only create a website once, so after they make that choice, they have to create a different type of project next time.

I realized this year in doing the National History Day project (which I have done before) that I have demotivated my learners in assigning too many weekly assignments. Many students are burned out, even the ones who were really excited about the project when we first started. I started too strong and next year I will pare down the number of assignments that students will have to do.