1 SoTL 2007 A Promise-Based Technique to Motivate and Improve Student Learning Hisham Al-Mubaid, PhD. School of Science and Computer Engineering University

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SoTL 2007SoTL 2007

A Promise-Based Technique A Promise-Based Technique to Motivate and Improve to Motivate and Improve

Student LearningStudent Learning

Hisham Al-MubaidHisham Al-Mubaid, PhD., PhD.

School of Science and Computer EngineeringSchool of Science and Computer Engineering

University of Houston - Clear LakeUniversity of Houston - Clear Lake

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A Promise-Based Technique to A Promise-Based Technique to Motivate and Improve Student Motivate and Improve Student

LearningLearning

Goals:Goals: To study an intervention technique based on

classroom (SoTL) research to improve learning. To increase student learning and student

engagement through a “promise mechanismpromise mechanism”. To research and test the effects of simple

interventions on learning. We focus on improving student engagement

and involvement to increase the overall learning and course achievement.

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A Promise-Based Technique to Motivate A Promise-Based Technique to Motivate and Improve Student Learningand Improve Student Learning

Introduction and problem descriptionIntroduction and problem descriptionSome students in higher education do not effectively

engage in the class and show minimal or no motivation in the course: excessive absents no homework submission late HW submission other signs: request deadline extension, incomplete projects

Unfortunately even students who seem competent sometimes lose motivation.

One of the consequences of this is: reduced learning and less achievements.

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This is no doubt a difficult problem which some simple heuristic techniques can help ameliorate to some degree.

Also professor can use some of the published and proven techniques from the educational-based literature.

We propose simple technique based on promise to help students become more engaged and increase their learning and course performance.

A Promise-Based Technique to Motivate and A Promise-Based Technique to Motivate and Improve Student LearningImprove Student Learning

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The central question that we would like to address in this project is how to make students more involved/engaged and motivated in the course to improve and increase their learning from the course?

We would like here to test and explain the efficacy of simple technique that instructors can easily use to help students become more interested and more motivated in the course.

The proposed technique would help students promote their self-motivation which could lead to increased learning.

The Central QuestionThe Central Question

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The method we propose is a teaching-learning based technique, we call it promise-based technique.

The method is very simple and based on introducing small interventions for asking students to give some anonymous and voluntary promises about their involvement and their interest in the course.

Besides enhancing students’ learning, this method also encourages professors to be more interested and excited about the learning.

Usually, and for most people, their promises exceeds their achieved tasks haven’t provided the promise.

The MethodThe Method

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Our interest arose from our experience with practical problems where students seemed not motivated (not engaged) in the course. They have difficulty in following the course learning sequence.

In response to these difficulties, a number of simplesimple techniques has been tried (in individual and small group basis) that had dramatically reduced the problem.

They had in common that they were based on “promises to do better”. In addition they were entirely voluntary – students took them had performed better.


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Background and Related WorkBackground and Related Work Increasing student motivation is a fairly common and

well researched problem in the education-learning research literature.

We reviewed the techniques and methods that have been proposed in the literature, in the past few decades, to address this problem.

A number of researchers have proposed certain principles and guidelines for effective teaching and student engagement.

These principles and guidelines are considered best practices for successful and effective teaching, instruction, and learning, and are supported by research.


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For example, Chickering and Reisser (1993) proposed seven proven principles of effective teaching; see Table 1. They also described ways of how to improve and increase student learning.

Langlois and Zales (1992) described eight characteristics of an effective teacher from their review of the teaching-related literature.

Eble (1971) described student perceptions of effective teachers.

Knowles (1980) provided four basic principles for adult teaching.


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Table continued ….next slide

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(This table is adapted from the Division of instructional innovation and assessment DIIA, UT, website: http://www.utexas.edu/ academic/diia/).

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Thus, the problem is low student engagement, students seem not motivated, no student involvement in the course activities, and learning suffers.

Action: follow the proposed techniques in the educational

research literature for motivating students and improving student engagement.

That is, follow and apply ‘best practices’ for example. What if the problem still exists: some students still lose

focus and tune out (not motivated) in the course. What do you do when you've done all you can to follow

best practices and some students still lose focus and tune out?


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This project presents yet another technique to be investigated for efficacy to reduce the problem.

We put the proposed technique is a SoTL project to get some expert advice and constructive feedback and comments that will lead to desired outcomes.

One motivation for this work: in education there is no single or generic technique/principle that all professors can use and follow to solve certain problem (e.g. to increase student motivation). The best technique to follow should be selected based on a number of factors like the academic level, context and discipline, student characteristics, and other aspects.


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Method DescriptionMethod Description

The problem is that some students lose the motivation for learning, lag behind, and put minimum or no effort for the course.

The technique we propose is very simple and based on introducing small interventions for asking students to give some anonymous and voluntary promises about their involvement and their interest in the course.

Let us discuss a more general portrayal of the method. Suppose there is a group of students. These students have a specific assignment to finish within fixed timeframe. The expected normal outcome is that the quality and completeness of the completed and submitted work will vary from one student to another.

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If this assignment is a course project, for example, or a term paper, then the student who submitted a high quality deliverable has gained more learning than the one who submitted a lower quality project.

Moreover, the students who completed the assigned work have gained more learning than those who did not.

Our method is interested in helping the students to complete the assigned work so that they will gain the most of learning associated with that course work. How can we do that?

Let us go back to our group and the assigned work. Let us randomly divide this group (call it group G) into two subgroups g1 and g2 of equal size such that: G = g1 U g2


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Let g1 be the control group and thus we give the other group, g2, the intervention as follows.

We ask group g2 to fill and submit an optional and anonymous form in which they promise that they will work and try their best towards completing the assigned work with quality.

Our hypothesis is that the final desired outcome will be that the percentage (ratio) of group g2 members who complete the assigned work with quality will be larger than that of group g1;


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That is: > where:

a is number of completed projects in g1 b is number on incomplete projects in g1 c is number of completed projects in g2 d is number on incomplete projects in g2

(according to a pre-defined criteria for project completion)

The promise that g2 members gave in the beginning of the project motivated and urged them (intrinsic motivation) to devote more time and more attention to completing the assigned work.


dc

c

ba

a

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Completing the assigned work on time is necessary to fulfill their promise even though the promise was optional and voluntarily.

Thus, the promise served as an instrument for

intrinsic motivation. We make this intervention optional to remove any

stress or psychological pressure that might result from it; and thus, students chose (completely voluntarily) to submit the promise without any pressure.


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Test 1Test 1 The promise based technique has been used on

individual basis. Example: a student come to your office to talk with you

about his/her low performance in the course so far (e.g. after a midterm test). That is, the student is looking for some kind of advice and counseling from the professor.

After talking with the student: I try to get from her/him a promise that s/he will do better in the remaining time of the course.

This will initiate an internal psychological drive to ignite and exert the efforts to fulfill the promise (like a debt/loan work extra hours to pay it off).

Preliminary EvaluationPreliminary Evaluation

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Test 2Test 2

The issue here is that some students rely mostly on the classroom lecture notes and do not read the textbook as they supposed to. Students feel that they understand the subject, no need to read the text, and the lecture notes are enough.

However, instructor encourages and urges them all the time to read the textbook as they will find more details, more examples, …etc. One thing professors can do in this situation is that they can ask the students to fill some promise-based optional forms and submit it. This should lead to more achievement of students in the assigned work which is reading the textbook.

Two small computer science classes we used to test and evaluate the method in textbook reading assignments and the preliminary informal results indicated that the method is effective in improving and increasing learning and involvement in the course activities.

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The plan is to conduct this research in different groups of same courses for graduate and undergraduate students in Computer Science (CS).

Furthermore, we plan to conduct this method for several different types of course assignments, e.g. term paper, programming project, and more; See Table 2.

For example, assume we want to apply the method to improve class attendance. For that, we give students forms to fill as an optional homework. In that form, a student provides his or her promise to attend certain number of classes.

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Evaluation Criteria: The criteria for evaluating the method will be by assessing the learning outcomes by comparing the performance results of the control group with the test group.

Some of the outcomes are summarized in Table 2 and can be measured depending on the type of the activity.

For example, for class attendance activity, we compare the class attendance and absence rate of the control and test groups. We should have, hopefully, better and higher attendance rates in the test group than the control group, and thus, the test group should have gained more learning and accumulated more knowledge in that course.

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The learning activities that we plan to evaluate the method on are: Textbook Reading Class attendance Class participation Class projects or homework Term paper

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Num Groups Assigned Work Desired Outcomes

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Two sections of the same undergraduate CS course

Text book readingMore textbook reading.

Improved student learning.

2Two sections of the

same graduate CS course

= =

3


Class attendanceMore class attendance.




= =

5


Class participationMore student participation.




= =

7


Class projectMore completed projects.




= =

Table 2: Learning activities and groups to evaluate the proposed method

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The proposed technique is based on interventions given to students to ignite some kind of intrinsic motivation.

The promise serves as a tool that motivates the students to do better in the good direction.

The technique assumes that the learning is as much a matter of the will as a matter of skills or native IQ.

Usually, and for most people, their promises exceeds their achieved tasks haven’t provided the promise.

Psychological honesty ties promise and fulfilling it. This tie serves as a motivation and as a commitment that student feels should be achieved, which will ignite the self regulation and self monitoring to accomplish this task (Schunk & Zimmerman 1998; Hadwin & Winne 1996).

Discussion and ContributionDiscussion and Contribution

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An agreement between two people, or two parties, is considered an exchange of promises and this is perceived as a standard assumption in the literature. Accordingly, [Robins MH 1984] believes that an agreement is a “mutual exchange of conditional promises” [Gilbert M 1993].

A Promise-Based Technique to Motivate and A Promise-Based Technique to Motivate and Improve Student LearningImprove Student Learning

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ConclusionConclusion

This project represents work in progress and is presented to CASTL 2007 to get expert advice, mentoring, and to collect constructive feedback and critiques from the institute about this work.

The main focus of this project is improving student learning through motivations. We employ a promise mechanism as an instrument for motivation and self regulation to increase student engagement and improve student learning.

The main focus of the learning improvement efforts in this research is the student as recommended by all educational experts.

The preliminary studies that have been conducted are primitive and informal. The formal and extensive evaluation of the method will be conducted within the next several months probably during summer and fall of 2007 and early 2008.

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Thank You Thank You

Hisham Al-MubaidHisham Al-Mubaid

University of Houston – Clear LakeUniversity of Houston – Clear Lake

CASTL’2007 - ChicagoCASTL’2007 - Chicago

Documents

1 SoTL 2007 A Promise-Based Technique to Motivate and Improve Student Learning Hisham Al-Mubaid, PhD. School of Science and Computer Engineering University