Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Extrinsic Motivation Blog Prompt 1


Module 15 was about the behavioral theory which is based on motivation.  There are two different types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic.  Intrinsic motivation is an example of self-motivation.  Extrinsic motivation is motivation with objects such as candy and trophies.  There are different types of rewards for learning.  One is task-contingent rewards which is an example of rewarding a student for participating or completing a task.  The second is performance-contingent rewards which are given when a student is rewarded for doing a task to a certain level like getting all the problems correct.  However rewarding can be a very good thing some students get somewhat addicted to the reward and will not do tasks unless there is a reward, so a teacher has to find a balance between awarding students and making activities awarding and interesting in themselves the students are intrinsically motivated.

What is a good example of how to make the students in a first grade class be intrinsically motivated to learn there math addition and subtraction facts?

Videogames are very motivating because they are the reward in itself.  The reason is because the videogame is fun and entertaining all while completing a task.  Some of the extrinsic factors that are at play are completing the game and winning the game.  Another one is getting a better score than other students.  The score for a videogame motivates the students to try and do better to get a better and a higher score because they will either will be rewarded in the game or be considered better than the other people playing the game.

1 comment:

  1. One method I can think of is to relate it to something familiar. Creating relevance is always a good strategy. Connecting something a real life example should (in theory) increase intrinsic motivation. Discuss how they would divide up halloween candy in their classroom (before they actually do it), for example. You could also make something novel by adding objects they don't expect to talk about in a math classroom (favorite characters?)

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