Sunday, November 7, 2010
Motivation
Respond to this scenario: You have completed a project for a teacher that has taken you almost a month to complete. It was handed in on time, and you have waited more than three weeks to receive a grade on it. You have inquired about the grade, but have not received a response. What role does feedback play in student motivation?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
This is an interesting scenario that I am actually going through right now. I have just turned in a project and done a presentation that took me over ten hours to prepare. After we presented it, we stayed later to pick up and the teacher was in the room. We talked to her a little bit but she did not comment on our presentation at all. It would have been nice to receive some feedback, be it good or back. After that, my group and I were a bit discouraged. It makes it hard to want to work that hard at something if you are not going to get any response from your teacher. Even if the response was negative, knowing she paid attention and cared about what we had to say would have been better than nothing.
ReplyDeleteCritical feedback plays a huge role in student learning. Students want to know how they did on an assignment and the most important part to me is what to improve upon for future projects. I would probably be a bit anxious to receive my feedback and grade, but more frustrated because I had not gotten it back in three weeks especially if the teacher promised to hand it back within a week or two. If students do not receive feedback they will be discouraged and that may affect work in the future negatively because that can communicate not caring about the students' ability or the effort they put in.
ReplyDeleteThat is something that really annoys me as a student. What I have a hard time for educators is that we work so hard to turn things in on time and it seems like it takes weeks or months for us to recieve a grade for all our hard work. Now i know that teachers have a lot to grade and that it does take alot of time for them to grade everthing, but you would think that there would be some timely feedback so that we would be able to get something out of it. That is one thing that I told myself as an educator. I would make sure that if my students bust their butt to hand something in that I would bust my butt as well to hand stuff back to them.
ReplyDeleteI believe that timely feedback is key. In order to keep students motivated you need to show them or tell them constantly that they are doing good work. If students aren't getting feedback in a quicka and efficient manner, they may lose motivation to work hard on the next project. Students will also not know what your expectations are either. If you are not giving good feeback, your expectations might get lost in translation. I have turned in several assignments and not recieved any feedback from it. This is in turn, makes it hard for me to put together the next assignment because I won't know what the teacher is looking for as his/her assessment. Like I said before, feedback is key. It helps your students know what to expect on their next assignments. Timely feeback also motivates students to either keep up the good work or work harder on the next project or assignment.
ReplyDeleteI think it plays a huge role. Feedback allows students to see that the work they are doing, even if they didn't do it well is worth something. I know that I am currently in the same boat. We worked on a group video forever!! Currently the teacher is behind on three chapter analysis and this big video project. I have emailed her three times, all of which were before the project were due and she did not respond once. Personally it is frustrating not knowing, and frankly I have given up trying to do things well and on time because she obviously is not putting in the effort that I am. So I think certainly feedback plays a role in motivation. If students are expected to complete a project by a certain date, there should be no reason it takes that long to get the project back and they know this. They will think the teacher doesn't care about their work and cease to care as well. This is a bad cycle to start and just gives the students a bad attitude about completing work for the teacher again. This also gives them no direction for the next time like anedved said. We want to set our students up for success not make it a guessing game where they think we don't care. So, feedback plays a big role in motivating students.
ReplyDeleteThis scenario has happened to me often while going through school. For me personally this is very upsetting as a student to have a project you worked long and hard on and then not to get a reaction or feedback right away makes it seem not worth your while. It also makes me second guess myself with my work for the rest of the class beause I don't know how I did on the big project. As a future teacher I think these types of mistakes on the teachers part can really affect most students motivation. My reaction to not getting my grade back might be minor or huge compared to other students reactions. I know most students would be upset about it and wouldn't know were to go from their. So as a future teacher and student now I think feedback plays a huge role in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI agree with anedved that when not recieving a grade makes it had for students to know what your expectations are on the next assignment. The reason that students would lose motivation is because of a guessing game and it gets frustrating so the students give up. As a teacher you need to stay on top of these things or make sure you set a deadline for yourself and keep yourself accountable by telling your students when they will get their grades back. By not doing this it sends the wrong signal to your students and makes them feel like you don't care which in turn causes them to lose motivation.
ReplyDeleteJen I agree that this can affect students' motivation. This may say to a student, "Yeah your work is somewhat important, but I'll get to it on my own time." That is just poor teaching because the teacher needs to be more organized and on top of things. Students do the projects because they are required, are a form of assessment, and connected to the learning goals/objectives for the assignment. This may also lead to possibly the start of helpless orientation where the student did their work and did not get it back for a while making the student feel that their work is not "good" enough or school is just not for them. Let us not discourage students as future teachers, but bring out the best in them like Jen said with critical feedback and supporting the ability.
ReplyDeleteI think like Jen said we need to set deadlines for ourselves as teachers. If we hold ourselves accountable and tell the students our goal, we will feel more obligated to get it done by the date we set. This will give us the motivation and also is a way to let students know. Sometimes all they want is the teacher to communicate with them and let them know what is going on. We as teachers need to understand this and even if we are not going to have it done for awhile after because of various other obligations, just letting students know a rough estimate and talking to them about it will help them feel better about the whole situation, and as far as presentations go, immediate feedback from peers can be helpful as well. So I think we just need to keep them informed and give ourselves deadlines to help the whole process move more smoothly and keep all parties motivated.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Jen in that deadlines are very important. They keep both you and your students organized and motivated. I know that if I don't know a deadline for a project, I am not as motivated to complete it as opposed to knowing the project deadline. I am also in need of consistent feedback ensuring that I am on the right track and am still aligned with the teacher's learning goals. This certainly pertains to my future students in the classroom. They should know when a certain project is due and how long they will have in order to complete it. Students should also be given feedback while still in the process of completing the project. This helps them to know where they are and what they can improve upon before turning it in for a final grade.
ReplyDeleteFeedback on any kind of project is crucial for student success. If a student took the time and effort to complete the project/assignment efficiently and on time, then it's important that the teacher does the same with feedback. When a teacher takes an enormous amount of time to give feedback, the student may feel unmotivated to do another project. Students want to know their grades on something they have worked so hard on right away. Feedback allows for teachers to express the areas students need to work on and the areas they did very well on. In order for students to succeed, they need the feedback from their teachers to improve towards their goal.
ReplyDeleteI have also been in this situation as a student. I worked on a project for over 14 hours to get the assignment in on time. The professor took over a month and a half to give me feedback on that project. In the mean time we had other projects due. How was I to know that I was even doing the projects the way she wanted? Or if I was understanding them completely? It is extremely important to give feedback on an assignment right away. This way students understand the things they missed on the first project and the things the teacher liked. This helps students out on future projects. It is also important to include positive feedback, not just feedback that explains what a student needs to work on. It is much more motivating for a student if they realize the areas that they did very well on or that the teacher really liked. If students are always getting feedback that just tells them areas they need work on, that could be very detrimental on their self-esteem and their motivation to do other projects.
ReplyDeleteAs a student who has lived this scenario several times this is discouraging and I tend to lose a little faith in the teacher after I have not received any feedback and have even taken the extra step to ask about my project. I have to admit that on the next assignment I would very motivated to turn it in on time or I would rush through it just to get it over with. Feedback is a powerful tool and resource. Whether good or bad, feedback can help a student see where they need improvement and where they did well. A student who consistently receives feedback will feel motivated to try and do better next time. An interesting way to turn this scenario around would have the students give the teacher feedback on their project turn over.
ReplyDeleteI feel that at some point every student is in the scenario during their educational career. In this situation, I feel I would continuously remind my teacher about the grade. I understand that it every person has a busy life but at the same time I believe feedback is essential during school. Feedback can motivate students to try harder and can help them develop a relationship with their teacher. By not giving feedback students become less motivated and do not participate as much in class lowering their take away from their education.
ReplyDeleteI think it is absolutely ridiculous when a teacher assigns work and you don’t get it back in time to do the next assignment. I think as a college student I have seen this many times and it drives me batty. I want to do my effort to assign and grade assignments with accuracy and in a timely manner. Feedback is so important not only for you as the teacher but for students as well. It is important to the teacher so they know where to implement their teacher and what students need more work on. It is important to the student because they need to know what they need to work on and what they should be spending extra time on. How is the student supposed to know they have grasped a concept if you are not telling them what they need help on and what they are doing well? Something even more annoying to me is getting just a grade and no feedback as to why I got the answer wrong. It is very frustrating to know you missed a concept and you do not know how to fix it. My classroom will be a place where student feel comfortable asking questions and asking for help when it is needed. It is my job to tell students they are doing a good job and the things they need to work on, and I cannot effectively do this when I am grading papers three weeks later.
ReplyDeleteI really do believe that a deadline is a key factor when dealing with projects. Tha tis one way for you to stay on track and be able to better help your students with feedback
ReplyDeleteI have been lucky enough that I haven't had this experience myself, but I would imagine it would be very frustrating. How do you know what you need to improve on if you don't have any feedback? How do you know what you're doing well and what you need to keep doing in the future? Not knowing the answers to these questions would drive me nuts. It would make it harder to get motivated to do well if I didn't know what it would take to do well. Students need to know what's expected of them because if they don't, they may just do what's good enough for them. Chances are, what's good enough for a teacher and what's good enough for a student aren't the same thing. Feedback after a project or assignment is just as important, if not more so. If the student doesn't know what he or she did wrong or right, what did they learn?
ReplyDeleteI believe feedback plays a huge role in student motivation. Students are expected to have assignments in by a certain time with no exceptions so if the teacher can’t in return hand back assignments in a timely fashion it may cause students to lack respect for that teacher. If a teacher is lacking students’ respect it is more likely that they will be less motivated to perform well on assignments because they aren’t receiving feedback. It’s always frustrating as a student to have to wait weeks to receive grades on assignments. I realize grading student work is time consuming but it all comes down to communication. I know several of my teachers will apologize if it’s been taking them awhile to get scores back to us and will tell us where they are at with them and when they hope to have them to us by.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Melanie when she talks about how feedback is important to the students because they need to know what they should to work on for future assignments. If teachers don’t hand assignments back in time for students to know what they need to change before doing the next assignment, it will cause the student to lack motivation because they won’t know what expectations are required. It also drives me crazy how teachers will often have us do huge projects for our finals and then we’ll hand it in, leave for break, and never receive any feedback since the semester is over. I wish teachers would either send the assignments to us or email us letting us know how we did.
ReplyDeleteI feel that if it was imporant to get the project in on time, that it should be important to get them back on time. i feel that students deserve to get feedback on what they do, in a timely manner. This does not motivate studetns to work hard on things if they never will get a response or grade from the teacher. This will only frustrate the students.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jessie. I feel that communication is huge. If you are going to take a long time to grade the assignments then let the students know. It is the teachers job to communicate with the students.
ReplyDelete