My favourite quote

1. I found this unit a wasteland of dry, barely comprehensible facts assembled with insufficient structure and contextual discussion for a semi-moron like myself to make any progress on, and the competing demands of other units and income earning and all those others things could easily seem more valuable than wandering lost, dazed and confused through that wasteland. My favourite quote

2. University of New EnglandArmidale, New South Wales, Australia Motivation:An appropriate topic for a SET? Cathryn McCormack Teaching and Learning Centre University of New England November 2008

3. Background • UNE has been developing new evaluation instruments • All proposed questions tested using cognitive interviews • Each question needed to be: • Understood by students • Understood in approximately the same way • Be answerable in all teaching instances

4. Cognitive Interviews • Respondents think aloud while answering the question • 4 step process:Comprehension, retrieval, judgement and mapping to reporting system • Diversity sampling • Not exactly representative of how students answer the survey in class • Immediate retrospective think-aloud protocol used

5. Questions Tested • Based on your experiences as a student, please rate the teaching of [named teacher] in terms of motivation and inspiration to learn” (Very poor, poor, good, very good, excellent) (7 interviews) • The teacher motivated me to do my best work (Not at all, only a little, somewhat, mostly, completely) (35 interviews)

6. Results • All responses related to motivation in a broad way, and all descriptions were in line with rating “Completely … because I was unmotivated and she actually motivated me because she was really interesting, and it made me more interested in some of the subject matter, rather than being like oh, here we go again.” “Poor … All the answers are going to be poor … ‘cos every time I send her emails I either didn’t get a response or they responded very vaguely.”

7. Results “I wouldn’t say that [name] was like a big factor in the motivation for me doing my work, that would more be my tutor.” “Somewhat … I think I motivate myself more than anyone else does. … If he was a bad teacher it’d be harder to get motivated, … but I’m really competitive in terms of wanting to get really good at it.” “Mostly … the topic was enthralling. And that’s why I was mostly motivated … with less thrilling topics I’d be less motivated.” “Only a little … we had assessments every single week … then our feedback .. Took a minimum of three to four weeks.”

8. Motivation in the Literature • Traditional view: Trait theoryPerformance is a function of the individual, and has very little to do with the learning context. • Converse view:Places more emphasis on the learning context and less on the individual. • What makes classes more or less motivating? • Instructor’s enthusiasm, use of examples, active involvement of students, teacher/student rapport • Relevance of the material, organisation, difficulty level, variety

9. Is a High Rating Desirable and Fair? • Would behaviour of students be unnatural if teacher was ‘completely’ motivating? • High rating: • Excellence or easiness? • Charismatic personality or dependent learners? • Poor rating: • Boring and unapproachable manner or class full of self-motivated students? • Fairness: • Teaching role impacts • Nature of topic impacts

10. Thank you