Motivation and Live Teaching

Jun 6, 2014 • Greg Wilson

We got together to discuss our motivational screencast exercise this past Wednesday, and to be honest, the results weren’t as strong as they had been for previous exercises. Quite a few videos came in late, many were over time, and most importantly, the majority explained how to do something, rather than convincing viewers that the topic was worth learning.

The discussion of demotivation and what to do about it went better: many people found common threads in the stories other participants had shared. The two that I drew out were unfairness and indifference, and we discussed some things instructors can do to address these.

For our next exercise, we will take another run at motivating learners, and also get some practice both teaching live, and giving and receiving critiques of live teaching. When we meet again on June 18, everyone will have 90 seconds—really 90 seconds, not 95 seconds or two minutes—to do a live presentation via Google Hangout to the rest of the group in order to convince them that something is worth learning. You can point the camera at yourself or share your screen; you can draw on the whiteboard, show slides, code live, or recite poetry, but whatever you do, your goal is to make us want to learn something (which must be related to the things we teach in our bootcamps).

To get ready for this, you will practice your presentations in pairs during the coming two weeks. I’ve tried to respect time zones in the match-up below (Aur, I took you seriously when you said you were a “night person”), and I’ll mail out introductions as well so that you have each other’s contact information. I look forward to seeing you all in two weeks.

Jeremiah Lant Scott Burns
Chandler Wilkerson Jeff Hollister
Matthew Dimmock Dan Warren
Yu-Ching Shih Simon Michnowicz
Jacob Levernier Dav Clark
Bror Johnson Catalina Anghel
Tim McNamara Hsingtzu Wu
Mark Stillwell Shyam Rallapalli
Padraic Stack Isabel Fenton
Michael Schliephake Alexandra Simperler
Jonathan Frederic Genevieve Smith
Dan MacLean Christian Jacobs
Florian Rathgeber Graham Etherington
Russell Alleen-Williams Mark Wilber
Tim Warren Aur Saraf

Software Carpentry Instructor Training Group 9 / June 4, 2014

Most scientists don’t want to learn how to code. They regard it as a tax they have to pay in order to do their science. If they wanted to be computer scientists, they could have chosen a different major as undergrads.

Unfairness is demotivating. This includes feeling that the teacher’s attention is unfairly divided, e.g. devoted more to those asking questions than those who are too behind to ask.

Feeling that nobody cares about you is demotivating.

If you get asked a question that it’s uneconomic to answer during class, a good idea is to publicly commit in writing to answer it later.

In a course Greg attended, they had a game mechanism for making everyone talk at least a third as much as the most talkative person (all get three tokens, you use them by asking questions, when everyone used at least once you all of them three back)

  • This works well in small (8-person) meetings, too.

Greg also knew someone who created a person-by-person matrix (with each person’s name intersecting every other person in the class). Whenever someone interrupted someone else, the meeting head would put a tick mark at the intersection of those two people, quantifying who’s interrupting whom, and how often. (This was a specific troubleshooting method for a spefic problem they had, and should be taken as example, not technique.)

19:00 Eastern (16:00 Pacific)

Common threads in demotivational stories

  • students not feeling important or valued
  • No perceived value in the course work
  • People wanting to learn and do good work and getting caught up with obstacles that weren’t really related to the learning part of what they were doing (prof.s having unreasonable expectations, bureaucracy, etc.)
  • Poor teacher experience
    • “I think the situation would have been a lot better if the teacher had provided more background”
    • “He brushed it off…”
  • Teachers not motivating.
  • bad experience in course, feeling humiliated or embarrassed

14:00 Eastern (11:00 Pacific)

Common threads in demotivation

  • lack of feedback
  • A mismatch between teacher and participant expectations resp. prerequisites seems for me to be the main reason of demotivation.
  • some bad faith
  • Wrong level of difficulty
  • dry presentation
  • teachers making assumptions (knowledge of students, background)
  • Lack of information (misunderstanding of the topic)

Unfairness: lots of groups with previous experiences of unfair treatment Any reinforcement of that unfairness will demotivate students Greg mentioned 50/50 split almost always accepted, 60/40 split is almost always (~90%) rejected.

Greg will post numbers on female representation in comp sci, etc.

Students who don’t ask questions: most likely to need more help, probably avoiding asking We should be seeking them out in our bootcamps

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

  • Maslow theorized without data (i.e., he made it up)
  • It’s wrong. Feeling that one matters is hugely important to people, at a base level.
  • Our school systems tend to be very bad at accommodating needs.

Indifference: Best way to make students think we care: to actually care

Offer tangible proof that you will get back to a student/return to their problem — an email, a post-it note Learn names of students

Notes: Practice your 90 second pitch with your partner, Greg will pair us up according to timezones Let him know if there’s anyone in particular you’d like to be paired up with Greg will announce pairings on Friday

  • you will meet another instructor! which is good for our community
  • you won’t be going into your pitch cold in two weeks
  • Can change topics from your video, but still needs to be something related to software carpentry, something we would teach in a bootcamp

Everyone gets nervous when teaching/presenting

10:00 Eastern (7:00 Pacific)

What common threads did you see in other people’s demotivational stories?

  • Changing goal posts: instructors changed aspects of the assignment midway or after some students had completed the assignment
  • Injustice
  • People got hurt in some psychologial way
  • they did not get a deserved reward
  • The student did not think they were valued in the class
  • expectation to do follow the mechanics without deeper explanations. Inflexibility.
  • No a priori belief they could do it, for whatever reason, not helped.
  • Perceived disengagement on part of instructor
  • inefficiency
    • The truest form of respect is to treat other people as if their time was as valuable as yours.
  • Poor ability of instructors to motivate ideas, concepts or requirements

Motivating — selling the idea! Especially to people who don’t need to care.

Two weeks from now, 90secs live, to convince Greg that the idea is worth learning. Will share over Google Hangouts, can share video/screen, but don’t have to. The idea should be related to the things SC is interested in. Need not keep to same topic.

Don’t go in cold. In the next two weeks, do a rehearsal with another person. Then do it online with someone else in this teaching group

Unfairness demotivates like almost nothing else can. People would rather go without than settle for less than they deserve.

People will go to extreme lengths to feel that they are important. Given a choice between self respect and food, people will choose self-respect. If in a classroom , therefore, people feel the instructor is being unfair they will become de-motivated. One reason why class/instructor ratio (40/2) is high. Why instructor must talk to the student.

Thorny problems that need call back can be IOU’d with sticky notes, to provide a commitment to action and proof that they matter as a student.

People will behave differently if they consider themselves anonymous than if they are known, they are more involved.