Narrator: This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan: Hello, and welcome to
this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles finish our series on Stirring Motivation by talking about the lessons that they've learned along the way. Thanks for joining us.
Rob: Well, Jared, it's that time
Jared: to wrap up assessment of the series. So what we like to do in these, lessons learned episodes, if you're new to the Transform Your Teaching podcast, is we, end our series, each of us, we write three lessons that we learn and we don't share them with each other. And we kind of go off the top of our heads talking about each one. And sometimes they match up and sometimes they don't. And sometimes we have arguments about them.
And sometimes we're like, I agree. It's one of my favorite ones that we do, my personally myself.
Rob: Yeah. I enjoy it.
Jared: Especially when you bring post it notes. I'm gonna start bringing post it notes.
Rob: I got a post it note, baby.
Jared: That's very exciting. You've had that post it written
Rob: for sitting on my desk since let's see. It was the first thing I did this morning.
Jared: Okay. That's pretty good.
Rob: You will also be impressed. As I was reviewing our different episodes on Motivation
Jared: Uh-huh.
Rob: Specifically Motivation with SDT
Jared: Mhmm.
Rob: I decided that my three would use Acer, a c r. So autonomy Knacker. I like Acer. So anyway Yeah. Acer, autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Jared: Alright. Why don't you start with your Post it note there?
Rob: Well, my first one based off of autonomy was something that doctor Alterman talked about, and it really stuck, was this idea of having choice within structure. So it wasn't just giving choice for anything, but it was having choice within defined structure. So I can't give and and that was the one thing that I I realized in listening to our guests, whether it was doctor Alterman or doctor Aguilar or doctor Leveque Bristol, they all said the same thing. Choice is important, but it can't just be chaotic choice. Yeah.
It needs to be structured choice, and I think doctor Leveque Bristol really helped narrow that gap for especially for the higher ed folks, and I would say k through 12 as well when she said, it's got to align with your with your objectives, with your course objectives. It needs to be alignment, and activities need to align. But if you can give some sort of structure that's not so demanding or dictatorial or you must do this and then this and then this. Domineering. Domineering.
Domineering. Dominating. Yes. Then you give choices within that framework that is kind of the sweet spot in terms of that compass that we were talking about, the motivation motivation compass when it comes to teaching and learning. So that's that's my first one from the STT autonomy.
Jared: Yeah. Well, not surprisingly. Mine is the exact same.
Rob: We did not wear these at all.
Jared: As soon as you said autonomy, I rolled my eyes. You didn't see me, but, it was mine is too much autonomy is bad.
Rob: Yes.
Jared: Guardrails slash fences are needed. Students vary on the level of guardrails or restrictions they need or want, but all want some degree of autonomy. I think that came up in our interviews with Josh and Josh. Mhmm. It came up in almost every single one of the interviews that we had with the SDT people.
So, yeah, along the same ideas of you, like, it's just difficult as a as as an educator to find where that sweet spot is because it can't just be a one size fits all because you'll have some students who want the a and don't care about anything else. Then you have the students who, are not motivated to do anything, let alone get out of bed. So it's just trying to find that sweet spot there where they may want a bit of control over it, but for the most part, they're still relying on you as the instructor to give them enough room Yeah. But within within a certain limit.
Rob: And that's difficult.
Jared: Very much so.
Rob: I mean, it's it's very difficult, especially if you're expecting a certain ability level
Jared: Mhmm.
Rob: Cognitive level with your students coming into your course.
Jared: Yeah. Don't start your course with this stuff. I I would say you can't really start your course with, a project or an idea like this. I feel like it's something you gradually scaffold and take the scaffolding away because you really don't I mean, we have prerequisites in higher education for a reason. Yep.
The assumption is that they understand this stuff before they get to you. But I don't know how many times that's happened where you assume, but then you realize your assumptions are wrong and you have to go back and reteach. There could be various factors at play there for that, but Right. You just you just don't know. So I would recommend not starting a course with a very autonomous assignment or project, for me anyway, because you don't know where you're you can't just assume because you could be leading them directly into chaos and confusion if you're just like, okay, I assume you know all this stuff, so let's build on it.
You know?
Rob: Well, which then is an argument for pretests of some sort. Yep. And when I say pretest, I don't necessarily mean give them a Scantron and have them do that. But there's some way for you to do prior learning assessment so that you know where they're at and you're not just assuming based on, oh, they went through this course and they went through that course and they passed. So therefore, they must be okay, especially if it's stuff that's fundamental to what you're going to be doing.
Mhmm. I think you've got to you gotta start your class off somehow that way. You need to know what your learners know and what they're able to do. Mhmm.
Jared: There's something else with that before we go on. With course objectives, I feel like they're there for a reason, but there's also a bit of freedom that instructors have in how they meet those objectives. And that's great. So but there could be like, for example, I teach intro to lit different than other instructors teach intro to lit. We have the same course objectives, but how we get there is different.
Right. So the assumption that students coming into a class who have taken Intro to Lit and are required to take Intro to Lit before they get to that class, the way I teach may be different than another instructor has taught it. So you can't assume that students who are in your course now took the course previously in a way that builds on even though the objective is maybe building on onto it, you can't assume they're hitting certain things that maybe you think you would hit in that previous class.
Rob: Right.
Jared: The instructor didn't.
Rob: Yeah. Alright. Number two. Number two, comes from c, which, for STT was competence. So the three things just review real quickly, autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Acker. Are the three Acer. Are the three major principles in terms of psychological need according to STT. So competence. In addressing this, my takeaway from listening to our guests interviewing the students was that you gotta start with the why.
You've got to start with why are you taking this course? Why am I taking my time to teach you this material? And for some courses, like, quite frankly, mine Mhmm. And business ethics. Mhmm.
Most of my students probably see it as a course that they must take because somebody told them they had to. So getting them to understand the why behind not just taking things at face value, like the standards that they're all going to have to abide by and assuming that they're all correct and assuming that that everybody's translating those those standards in the same way, getting them to realize that and then think through it and like, oh, wait a minute. You mean I can be ethical and not be right before God? That one that's one that oftentimes is is a kind of a wrench. Yep.
Because everybody thinks of of being ethical as being morally right. So for me, it just kind of, like, reinforced this idea of, one, as an instructor, not assuming that my students realize or understand why it's important. Does that mean that everybody's gonna agree with me? No. So like doctor Menser, who doctor Leveque Bristol talked to us about in in our podcast interview with her, her colleague who is now just doing HyFlex at Purdue Polytechnic, and he that's all he does now.
So for those of you who don't know HyFlex is, we'll have some resources for you to click on in in the show notes. Some episodes on Flex. Yeah. We've we've done some. Yeah.
So there's there's definitely some resources there.
Jared: Go back to that because now I wanna explore it more for my own benefit.
Rob: But I'm this whole idea of answering the why, he uses that. He tells them why they would wanna be in class. And then those who really resonate with that come. Right. And he's found that more people come that don't.
And the ones that do come are highly engaged. Sure. And that's what I want. So I'm I'm thinking I'm thinking about how I can accomplish that.
Jared: Well, my number two is different. Spoilers. So I took I went down a different path and I thought about the external factors, that are at play for a student before they come into the classroom, in motivation. And I thought how much of a crucial role they play. So when we had doctor Chao Lu on, he talked about how can sleep affect cognitive abilities.
Rob: Mhmm.
Jared: And we talked with Betsy Linnell before about this as well. When students come into a classroom, we need to consider what's going on outside of that. Right. It came up with doctor Leveque Bristol and several other interviews where we don't we need to know the previous education of the students, and we use the term handholding with that. But there's an element in which students come in with a level going back to autonomy, going back to a level of independence that they want.
Then you have some who have never, especially like freshmen coming in, never really had an experience like a college classroom before.
Rob: That,
Jared: and then you've got, this is with Doctor. Chao Lu, like, how much sleep did they get last night? What's going on in their dorm? What's like, with Josh and Josh, the roommate dynamics.
Rob: Yes. That's an interesting one.
Jared: You've got one student who has a highly motivated, highly regimented schedule that has affected Josh, the one Josh. Then you have another Josh who's like, bro, if you don't hang out with us, you're not cool kind of a thing. I really dumbed that down. But like, that's essentially what it is. And it plays a factor on when they come into your classroom.
Yeah. So, yeah, external factors were a big a big thing for me because it was like, well, your students don't just exist in your classroom. They're not just there all the time. You know what I mean? When you walk into the classroom, they haven't sat there waiting for you for twenty three hours and said, you're back.
Finally, we can keep talking about the great Gatsby. I wish that would happen because I love that novel, but no one seems to like it as much as I do. So it's just something to keep in mind is that external factors play a big role in motivation for students. That was my number two.
Rob: Well, your second one leads to my third.
Jared: K.
Rob: You mentioned it a little bit, and it has to do with relatedness. And one thing that has been going through my mind a lot is what's the future for students and teachers with AI? Right? And you can you can look out on the news and you're gonna see lots of different things. Lots of different things.
Like, nobody's gonna have any jobs to you know, we're all just gonna be mechanics for for the machines. Right? And the priests of AI are touting AGI and how it will, you know, solve so many problems. But what I can't get away from and what you and I can't get away from is the power of relationships between humans because we're created in the image of God. And I realized that when we were listening to the students, when we were listening to Josh and Josh, as well as even our conversations with many of our guests, it it was just this theme that kept coming out to me is that those human relationships are are part of that relatedness in the SDT that we have to
Jared: have. Mhmm.
Rob: It would be nice to have. I think and believe they are we have to have. So it resonates for those of my colleagues, here at Cedarville and other places who have just a burden for life to life kinds of either discipleship or learning context because they they see that as so important. And to, you know, to a good degree, they're not wrong. Mhmm.
But oftentimes, though, I think sometimes we can take the tools or assume that just because we meet face to face, then therefore golden things happen. And I I I, you know, I would I would push back on that and say, no. It's intentional relationships just like we saw with Josh and Josh. We had two who were influenced by others, and that's the other thing you can't get away from. We can't get away from.
AI cannot influence us to the same degree that a relationship with another person can can do. So there are so many who are trying to now remember I said same degree as you're sitting there turning your face at me.
Jared: Won't argue that.
Rob: I'm not saying it can't influence. I'm just saying it can never be the same. Here's why. It's not created in the image of God, period. Fair.
While you could use it as a tool, it's not a replacement. And I think I think the other piece there that just kinda, like, blew my mind was, with Josh and Josh especially, was the key variable of having the right kinds of influence and the right kinds of people in your life to help you get to where you want to go. You know, we had one Josh who was changed his life significantly in terms of, like, some of the externals that you were talking about. Right? Sleep.
Right. You know, he made sure he got seven hours of sleep. Mhmm. He was planning out his day and trying to plan out the demands that he had he had on his time. So he had these priorities, and he was trying to put those on his calendar in some way and make sure that he was using his brain power, using when he was, you know, most alert and ready to think and work, like earlier in the morning, which that goes exactly with what we see in the literature on these things.
The biorhythms, the circadian rhythms, I think you'll see that in the literature, show that we're most awake. We're most ready to think in those early morning hours. We all seem to have, like we get to, like, ten or 11:00 and we kinda plateau and then we have lunch maybe, at least here in The United States. Have lunch. You know, in Spain, they take a nap somewhere in the afternoon.
Maybe it's not a bad idea.
Jared: I don't mind that at all.
Rob: You know, they have that siesta. But but most people's brains kinda like for doing high cognitive workload kinds of tasks. Once you get into the afternoon, it's it's definitely your cognitive abilities have have decreased, I would say, generally speaking. Some people, maybe it kicks back up in the evening, but for most, we find ourselves wanting to wind down and Yeah. Head towards bed.
Yeah. So all that to say that was, like, that really heavily influenced their behavior, Josh and Josh specifically. Like, one was more social, one that didn't you know, he had FOMO Yeah. Maybe a little bit. Yeah.
A fear of missing out on on relationships and missing out on those potential things. Whereas the other Josh found someone that helped bring a little bit of order and benefit to his existence, you know
Jared: Uh-huh.
Rob: Where he went from not being very productive in his freshman year to now feeling like he has some sort of control and feels like he is learning and growing in the way he should based on just a very simple schedule. Yeah. So that was yeah. That was my third and final takeaway. What was yours?
Jared: Not maybe not as robust as Robust. Yours have been, but I've really hooked on to the circumplex model from Natalie Altman et al. And I really want to look at each one of these areas more in-depth, like the abandoning, awaiting, participative attuning. I like those types of even during our our interview with doctor Leveque Bristol, she had it off screen, and I could see her point. Well, that's more like this, and that's more like this.
And I think that stuff is awesome. And I love, you know, like, the the whole cheap, good, or fast Yeah. Yeah. Idea. Yeah.
Like, I love stuff like that where it's like, well, you can have two. You can't have all three. You could, you know Yep. So this visual representation of, motivation and stuff is something I really wanna dive into more. I think they could be a potential series idea of going through each of those specifically and discussing more.
Rob: Yeah. I think it's a great evaluative tool. Yeah. I mean, genuinely, if you're, like, looking down on in these three areas of autonomy, competence, and
Jared: Yeah.
Rob: And relatedness, and this compass is just sitting over it, you can you can then diagnose like, okay, why are things not going well?
Jared: Yeah. Well, it's something we didn't really talk about with, doctor Leveque Bristol that I, maybe we'll have her back on is the evaluative process of that because this can look very intimidating to a faculty member.
Rob: Yeah. Because when you start talking about evaluation
Jared: You start using terms like demanding and domineering. It's like, what are you talking about? So, yeah, I that's really my third. It's just like, was really intrigued by the circumflex model and kinda wanna dive deeper into it. So with all the time that I have, just go ahead and spend a whole day yesterday building a desk.
Felt so old. It was awful. Anyway, that's another series, Stirring Motivation. We finished another one, my friend.
Rob: I am stirred.
Jared: I am motivated and I am stirred. On to the next one.
Rob: Yes. What will the next one bring?
Jared: I won't tell you, but it'll be fun.
Ryan: Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments about our series on motivation, feel free to send us an email at CTLPodcastcederville dot edu. You can also connect with us on LinkedIn. And finally, don't forget to check out our blog at cederville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.