Scenario: The Case of the Missing Motivation

[Jo Hampton]

Your students’ motivation is going the way of the dodo. What’s your plan to revive it? (And no, playing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ on repeat doesn’t count—unless it works.)

[Frances M]

First, I would try to find out why the student motivation is low. If there are no clues, I would then look at the topic I am teaching, how I am delivering it and try to see if there are any improvements I could make to increase student motivation and participation. For example, do students feel supported and is the work appropriately scaffolded.

[Jo Hampton]

Thanks Frances. Yes, could be my content is not that exciting!

[ejb30]

When people are drifting off, this is called mind wandering (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-wandering). In general mind wandering is caused by failures to prime and maintain attention.

To maintain attention/vigilance we can do the following:

1.From attentional resource theory – we can impose a demand on the learner (such as a learning task). Remember that the withdrawal of demands will reduce attention (unless they are fatigued). In my opinion aside from starting easy – it’s generally better to have high demands with high breaks than it is to have low demands constantly.

2.From cognitive load theory – we can review if mind wandering is occurring as a way to reduce cognitive load (we can divide tasks up and see if they take off, if simplification/segmentation works then we probably are needing to review the task and difficulty).

3.From the testing effect – we can review our format to ensure that regular recurring events prime for future attention (if a person knows they will be tested, they are more likely to dedicate better attentional processes to a learning)
Frome boredom research – we can ensure there is difficulty changes, visual changes, and variation within a task and topic. Generally, if structural and surface components are too similar, people perceive no difference and eventually boredom increases (the sameness hypothesis).

Also I’ll just add that looking at things in a SITE way can help alot. SITE was a framework I was taught when I studied Human Factors. SITE basically goes like this:
Situational factors (S) influence Individual characteristics (I) which influence Task (T) which dictate the overall effect (E).
In this sense, looking at all interactions as a system, if we have a strong understanding of SITE we can manipulate situational factors to always have the individual responses (cognitive factors) we want, the task performance/learning we want, and the overall effect we want. In this sense if we look back at our design process (for before learning, during, and after) we can be more likely to enhance the attentional process and learning outcomes.

Also if your interested in attention I recommend learning about:
1. Attentional resource theory
2. Attention/vigilance literature reviews (often human factors is a good umbrella to look at, not so much nueroscience)
3. Human information processing model (basically attention comes first in any learning/processing events).

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by ejb30. Reason: Formatting

[ejb30]

When learners attention drifts away from tasks (something called mind wandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-wandering#:~:text=The%20history%20of%20%EE%80%80mind-wandering%EE%80%81%20research) its important to understand what attentional resources are at play. In general attention resources (and other attention evidence based theories) suggest that if there is no actual demand for attention, such as a needed task, then it will drift. This raises alot of questions about what demands have been given to the learner, if they are fully aware of the demands needed, whether or not additional demands can be provided, etc. If someone was more interested in this they could review research such as the literature on attention theory, and any human factors research related to it. For example here is a link to an abstract that pertains to recent attention-based research (and researchgate/sciencedirect may also be helpful places) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1071181319631506?journalCode=proe

My recommendation for mind wandering would be the following:
1. To avoid mind wandering – ensure at the planning step that more variation of a learning activity/task can be generated easily (such as ChatGPT assisting with infinitely creating problems
2. Measure mind wandering and attentiveness – self reports, webcam/software to perform visual tracking, etc.
3. Adjust demands – not only creating more is an option (as stated above), but desirable difficulty, multiple representations, can be important. One method of providing difficulty could be providing near but incorrect examples (erroneous examples), having a GenAI tool assist in creating them could also assist.
4. Assess if the learner is overwhelmed – generally if cognitive load is exceeded people may space out or disengage, often as a way to reduce cognitive load. You can assess if they are overwhelmed by reducing tasks and seeing if they are then more attentive and capable (for example just doing 1 task at a time).

From my previous studies in Human Factors, my professor recommended a model called SITE for examining phenomenon (in addition to doing research). SITE essentially means we should look at the outcomes we see, as the consequence of the system. We should look at things in the following way Situational factors (S), impact the individual (I) on some kind of level(cognitive, etc.), which then influence the task (T) (learning/performance/behaviour), which then influence the effect (outcome of the system, which could be all children bored). The key in SITE is to understand the relationship between variables enough to be able to change S (situation) based factors to ensure that the flow on effects work in the intended direction.

Hope this helps
Thanks
Ted

[ejb30]

When learners attention drifts away from tasks (something called mind wandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-wandering#:~:text=The%20history%20of%20%EE%80%80mind-wandering%EE%80%81%20research) its important to understand what attentional resources are at play. In general attention resources (and other attention evidence based theories) suggest that if there is no actual demand for attention, such as a needed task, then it will drift. This raises alot of questions about what demands have been given to the learner, if they are fully aware of the demands needed, whether or not additional demands can be provided, etc. If someone was more interested in this they could review research such as the literature on attention theory, and any human factors research related to it. For example here is a link to an abstract that pertains to recent attention-based research (and researchgate/sciencedirect may also be helpful places) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1071181319631506?journalCode=proe

My recommendation for mind wandering would be the following:
1. To avoid mind wandering – ensure at the planning step that more variation of a learning activity/task can be generated easily (such as ChatGPT assisting with infinitely creating problems
2. Measure mind wandering and attentiveness – self reports, webcam/software to perform visual tracking, etc.
3. Adjust demands – not only creating more is an option (as stated above), but desirable difficulty, multiple representations, can be important. One method of providing difficulty could be providing near but incorrect examples (erroneous examples), having a GenAI tool assist in creating them could also assist.
4. Assess if the learner is overwhelmed – generally if cognitive load is exceeded people may space out or disengage, often as a way to reduce cognitive load. You can assess if they are overwhelmed by reducing tasks and seeing if they are then more attentive and capable (for example just doing 1 task at a time).

From my previous studies in Human Factors, my professor recommended a model called SITE for examining phenomenon (in addition to doing research). SITE essentially means we should look at the outcomes we see, as the consequence of the system. We should look at things in the following way Situational factors (S), impact the individual (I) on some kind of level(cognitive, etc.), which then influence the task (T) (learning/performance/behaviour), which then influence the effect (outcome of the system, which could be all children bored). The key in SITE is to understand the relationship between variables enough to be able to change S (situation) based factors to ensure that the flow on effects work in the intended direction.

Hope this helps
Thanks
Ted

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