Here is my attempt at motivating Python functions…
Demotivation
My most distinctive memory of demotivation occurred during a high school English class. We were writing a paper on a book we had just read and my report received a pretty poor grade. I was a bit surprised by this because I had been doing well in the class and I felt this paper was consistent with my previous work. The teacher generously allowed me to turn in a revised draft and I spent a lot of time reworking the previous draft to include his comments. After all my work a received one additional point and was, yet again, asked to revise the paper. Again, I incorporated all of the teacher’s suggestions, checked with the teacher about the changes, turned in the paper and received one extra point on the paper. I couldn’t understand how I did so well on all of my previous papers in which I only turned in one draft and did so poorly on a paper that I redrafted three times. The inconsistency really made me question the quality of my previous work and whether or not I had learned anything in the course.
I think this problem could have been fixed by an increased consistency in assessment. As a student, when you are told repeatedly that your product is quality work and then you receive a poor grade on a very similar product it is hard to reconcile this discrepancy. Was your previous work just crap and the teacher was going easy on or you or did you loose your touch? I think that being consistent with grading throughout a semester is very important because it is critical for students to be able to gauge whether or not they are making progress in the course.