Student Motivation Study
Problem
Most of the students I have taught did not get motivated enough to really learn until they failed once. For example, students were given all the quiz questions with the answer options 10 weeks prior to the quiz, were provided with a Q&A forum for students to post their questions about the quiz questions, were reminded every week of the difficulty of the quiz and necessity to study the quiz questions, were told to aim for 100% on the quiz, and were provided with a review session a week before the quiz was due. Despite all the support and study resources, most of the students did poorly on the quiz. The average scores of 65-70% (see Figure 1) are too low when they were given every resource and opportunity to get each question right.
The truth behind these low scores was that most of the students did not study the quiz questions enough. Interestingly, many students indicated that the questions were not clear and asked for clarifications. All those questions and requests for clarifications should have been addressed before they took the quiz during the 10 weeks of preparation time. Most of the students did not get motivated enough to really study the quiz questions until they did poorly on the quiz. My suggestions and reminders never got through to them until they did poorly on the quiz. Why was that? Sadly, for most of us, we sincerely listen to others only immediately after we lose or fail. We don't think about it until then, and we forget about it some time after that. Then, does it mean that all my effort to prepare students to do well on the quiz was useless for most students? To find an answer to this question, I conducted a longitudinal research as described below.
Experiments
Intervention 1
Students were provided with the following support to be ready for the quiz (see Figure 2).
- Students were given all the quiz questions 10 weeks prior to the quiz. The Q&A discussion forum was created for students to address any question that they may have, and the students were told to study the material and address any concepts and points that were not clear to them. The students were also told to aim for 100% on the quiz. During the 10 week preparation period, no students asked for clarifications or clues.
- A week before the quiz was due, I gave a review session for the quiz. I used 60+ slides to cover the concepts underlying the quiz questions. I also made the review slides available to students afterwards.
- Students took the quiz and the average scores fell in the 70-75% range (see Figure 3).
- Students were not very happy with their scores and claimed that they were not sure about what some of the questions meant and asked for clarifications.
- I gave them the second chance and let them retake the quiz. The quiz details were still hidden, so the students did not know the correct answers and which questions they got wrong. This time, students did study the quiz questions with peers and asked me for clues and clarifications.
- Students retook the quiz.
- Their average scores increased to above 98%.
This proved that it was possible to score close to 100% on the quiz if students studied each question and really made sure that their answers would be correct before taking the quiz. This led to my next experiment.
Intervention 2
Assuming that students didn't study enough because I didn't guide and support them frequently enough (i.e., frequently point them to the study resources and urge them to study the material), in the following semesters I provided students with more frequent reminders to make sure students would study for the quiz before taking the quiz. Students were provided with the following support (Figure 3).
- Students were given all the quiz questions with the answer options 10 weeks prior to the quiz, and were provided with a Q&A forum for students to post their questions about the quiz questions.
- Students were reminded every week of the difficulty of the quiz and the necessity to study, and were told to aim for 100% on the quiz.
- Students were provided with a review session a week before the quiz was due.
- Students were also told multiple times not to take the quiz until they were 100% sure about all the correct answers on the quiz.
- Students took the quiz and their average scores fell in the 70-75% range.
The results showed that despite all of the study resources and my constant reminder to study, most students did not study the quiz questions enough and did poorly on the quiz.
Conclusion
It was repeatedly demonstrated by students that whether I intervened frequently or not, it didn't make a difference in the amount of time students seriously studied for the quiz. Inevitably, they would not do well on their initial attempts on the quiz no matter how hard I helped them do well on the quiz. I was unable to get through to the students despite all the resources, reminders and support, but one failure was all it took to get them to study. What do these two interventions inform us? At this point, my stance or hypothesis is that students will not study until they fail once. In the upcoming semesters, I believe that I should shift most of my effort to helping them do better on the retake.