Thursday, February 19, 2015

Slow feedback = demotivation

I'm a slow learner.

It's taken 10+ cycles of this for me to get the hint.

When I fall behind in giving my students feedback on their work, their motivation suffers.

I try to catch up on grading over the weekend. It's hard during the week, when planning for impending classes takes priority (should it?).

But sometimes, on weekends, I am faced with snowdrifts of accumulating extracurricular (and often imposingly boring) tasks, and I let the grading/feedback slip.

And now I know, there are implications.

Maybe it's just coincidence, but my students are less motivated to work steadily and diligently toward their learning objectives.


Here's what I think: Timely feedback taps into Daniel Pink's trinity of motivation: mastery, autonomy, and purpose.

Maybe it's mostly about mastery here.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that flow-generating activities require immediate feedback (think of the feedback a basketball player gets as she shoots three pointers).

By puuting off feedback, I'm sucking the flow out of these experiences, and sucking teh motivations out my classrooom and studntes.

Of course, feedback takes time, and I can do anything, but not everything, but hey, what am I trying to accomplish here?

Time to make feedback priority number 1, 2 or 3 (second/third only to planning with meaningful standards (purpose) and relationships?).

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