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And so I always apologize to them, if you don't get anything
from the authors of the text and reading, perhaps it doesn't
really excite you, If you don't get anything from my home,
observe, personalized experiences and information
intake, I don't know what I can say to you.
If you get nothing from your colleagues, perhaps it was the
wrong time in history to take this course.
And if you get nothing from the final source, which is you, go
to the roof, and jump.
[audience laughter].
And then, the application of assignments actually cover all
of these things, for example, the very first assignment they
have to take the concept ideas, et cetera of the class readings
and discussion and apply them to some
personal experience within their lives.
And one of the activities that they have to do is actually in
little small groups, they have to get together and walk through
some of the same individual experiences, and apply the same
concepts and ideas from the course to it, and then students
are actually, they can say to themselves, what's listed in
number 9, and in the last statement here, talking about
how this material relates to my early experience and goals, not
by simply doing essays or telling [unclear audio] or
repeating what the author said but how
does it relate directly to you.
And then I always talk about body postures, facial
expressions, et cetera.
Because I will ask the student all the time, if you're looking
like this, in my class, first thing I want to ask you is, do
you need some help?
If any of this is psychological, I'll call the ambulatory service
for you, if it's sociological, I will get the civil militia,
because I think you're going to get your studies, and so you
project a particular message, then yes, I am interpreting it
just as you're projecting it, And I cannot take the chance
that perhaps it is sociological, you go to the bathroom, you come
back, and you shoot everyone, and I'm surprised when I have
allowed you for three weeks of enrolled, coming to class
looking like I am mad, I am angry, I'm upset.
I'm going to hurt someone, no.
Now, I used to do that as a joke, I'm not new at higher ed
teaching, this is my 33rd year actually, and I used to do it as
a joke, but today it's not a joke.
Because some people have actually had some sociological
issues and gone and come back and some things have occurred.
(Barbara). You know, what you're
talking about really is an ongoing
interaction in the class between the faculty and the students
that uses these kinds of information as the
spur for conversations.
So you can talk to the students in the
class, and especially you can reinforce.
So you can say, that was a wonderful, John, that was a
wonderful way of responding to Richard's comment, you disagreed
with him, but you did it specifically, and you backed up
your point with evidence.
Rachel, that was a really great question, that was a
tremendously powerful question for our discussion and did you
see how many other people were able to build on that question?
So the more positive, I mean, some people will go around and
the student who is sleeping, what do you do, you just stand.
And sometimes, don't you just stand next to them,
or some faculty will actually call them out.
You probably call them out, do you?
(male speaker). [unclear audio] and
I'll be back.
And I'll go ahead with the rest of the class, and we'll say,
okay, now we're ready.
Because you are a college student, [unclear audio],
engaged no matter what.
(Barbara). So there's an
interaction there, with students that may do
different kinds of things, but this is not a gotcha,
this is a guide.
This is a basis for conversation and a basis for working with
your class, but it lays out what the expectations are, and it
says, this is serious stuff and there are consequences.
And I am using the grading process to give you information.
There is a lot of information.
To give you information about what's expected and to let you
know how you're doing here so that you can participate,
so that you can do what needs to be done.
(female speaker). [unclear audio] So I've
always thought, well isn't it just
common sense that they're not lifting your arm, they're not
hopping, that you're not going to get the full participation
That a lot of times they still feel that they deserve it.
So I am going to take this and revise it to actually put what
their contributions are that they, you know, are hopping,
they were hopping, they are lifting their arms.
(Barbara). You know, we have,
you have, at this university, a large number
of first generation college students.
You have students coming in from all kinds of cultures and
subcultures and socioeconomic classes and
situations you don't even know.
And it's like they moved from the United States to Belgium,
you know, or to South Africa.
And they, it's not bad, they don't know the culture.
They just don't know the culture.
So it's up to us to articulate for them the expectations of the
culture of the academy.
And it, we have to remind ourselves how strange and
unfamiliar that culture can seem to students coming in if they
have not had experience with it.
And how their high school culture may ill prepare them, or
counter-prepare them actually, for what we're going to expect
and how their peer culture will not always
help them there either.
So, this is in a way a kind of cheat sheet, or informant sheet,
for academic culture, for what we expect of behavior.
So it becomes then, a guide, a basis for discussion, but also
it becomes the basis for saying to students,
"you're not doing it here.
You're not making it, you haven't handed in any of these
sheets for three weeks, so you are not where you need to be.
It's a [unclear audio], a reality check, [unclear audio].
So here's what I'm talking about, again at
the bottom of page 1.
It's okay to use grades for motivation in your classroom.
You don't have to feel guilty about that and you don't have to
feel like you're feeding grade grubbing, or making them fixate
on the grades as long as your grading system conveys
competence information.
I'm reading from the bottom now of page 1.
And is, your feedback is informative and constructive and
conveys positive recognition of creative work.
And I would say as long as your grading system helps the student
to figure out what is required here, and to be realistic about
what its going to take for them to meet the expectations, then
you are absolutely justified in establishing a grading system
that demands and rewards the behaviors
of the motivated student.
I can't tell whether they're motivated or not, I can't grade
them on motivation, but I can grade them on whether or not
they come to class prepared, whether or not they participate
in class, whether their papers show careful editing for
grammar and punctuation and spelling.
Right?
Whether they, in other words, whether they exhibit the
behaviors of a well motivated student, and that's what your
grading system can concentrate on.
You are very justified in doing that.
Now I want to go towards another concept here that
I think can be very, very helpful to us.
That's on page 2.
Marilla Svinicki is both a psychologist and a faculty
developer who's had a lot of experience in the field and
she's written a book in 2004 called Learning and Motivation
in the Postsecondary Classroom.
And in that book she focuses on the role of goals in motivation.
That's why when this question came up earlier on, I said I
want to use the word goal here, because it matters greatly what
the student's goal is, what the student's goal is.
And how that goal is expressed in the relationship between the
faculty members' goals.
So here's what Marilla says, she has this diagram which I have
reproduced here.
The motivation towards the goal is influenced
by the learner's goal orientation.
That's the first two lines.
Which in turn have these two components.
The value of the goal, how valuable is this goal to me, and
the learner's expectation that it can be achieved.