It's 7:43PM and my class starts at 7:45. All day I've been telling myself that I'm going to go this time around, but now it's 7:44, and it doesn't look like I'll be finished with this post by the time I need to leave. So I'm going to make the most of it and examine why I am not going, and hopefully learn something about the nature of motivation and education.
My thought process inevitably starts with excuse-making: "I'm not feeling well and going to class requires too much energy." Then the truth: "My class is a 3 minute walk from where I am right now, and all I have to do is sit there. Writing this post requires a lot more energy."
In the past I've thought that doing stuff meant using up energy, but the reality seems to be that it completely depends on what it is I'm doing. Doing too little leaves me feeling more exhausted than doing a lot. Okay, so why am I doing "too little" in class?
#1 the topic isn't particularly interesting to me, so I am not intrinsically motivated; it's a general education requirement. This means I'm doing less cognitive work than I do in classes that interest me.
#2 the structure of the class doesn't engage me. I listen, I watch, I doodle. That's the experience.
So what can the instructor do to change this?
Personalize the experience; take the time to find out students' interests (shift to intrinsic motivation). Perhaps get some more debate or discussion going (more cognitive work).
But the class and each student can be doing things to improve the experience as well. We can form teams of devil's advocates, do collaborative research, or create a discussion board.
This is wonderful when it happens, but for a student, the cost of initiating this approach is often too high. You run the risk of instructor or class disapproval and the responsibility of maintaining the collaborative process. I've taken this risk in a few of my classes, and when it pays off it is well worth it, and when it doesn't, it is not.
It seems that the solution is instructor-coordinated dynamic education. Just sanctioning collaborative initiatives and recommending a few tools to use (like Diigo or Google Docs or a Wiki Space) could make a huge difference. There needn't be a mandatory class forum, just the encouragement and the establishment of collaboration and individual initiative as a norm.
In conclusion, along a somewhat related vein, here's an goosebump-inducing video that's about as inspirational to me as my class isn't:
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