Win them overMotivating your audience

=== !Preparation !Write on board: Today’s objectives • Identify elements that trigger motivation • Describe techniques for cultivating audience motivation • Design solutions to motivational problems

Good morning. Welcome to our program on motivating your audience. !Let’s begin with a question: What do Mary Poppins and Tom Sawyer have in common? !On the surface, not much. She is a magical nanny who travels via umbrella aviation.   He is an adventurous child out to undermine the adult order. !They have in common a fine skill in motivating people. Mary Poppins got the Banks children to clean their nursery through song:

In ev'ry job that must be done There is an element of fun you find the fun and snap!

process instigating + sustaining

goal-directed activity

What is motivation? !It is a process for instigating and sustaining a goal-directed activity. !As a process, there are antecedents and procedures that we can shape. !Motivation comes and goes, so it requires regular monitoring and adjustments to instigate and sustain. !Motivation also centers on goals that we need to articulate. !From our pre-session survey, respondents were eerily consistent in their definition of a motivated audience. They make eye contact, they ask questions, and they engage in meaningful group discussions. My favorite survey response is that: “Their faces are bathed with tears of intellectual rapture.”

Zimmerman, BJ (2000). Attaining self-regulation: A social cognitive perspective. In M. Boekaerts, P.R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 13-39). San Diego: Academic Press.

motivationlearning &

participation

pay attention take notes

check understanding ask for help

practice

Why is motivation important to learning? !Zimmerman identified that when people are motivated, they engage in activities that help them to learn. !They pay attention, they take notes, they check their understanding, they ask for help, they practice their learning. ===

Objectives

Identify triggers of motivation

Cultivate motivation

Design solutions

By the end of our session today, you will be able to: !Identify elements that trigger motivation !Describe techniques for cultivating motivation among your audience !And then begin to design solutions to problems of low audience motivation ===

“A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” Charles F. Kettering

Resolution 35%

Problem identification 65%

In today’s activities, we are following the guidance of Charles F. Kettering, the American engineer who invented the electric starter for cars. !He noted that: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” !In this spirit, we will focus today on identifying low motivation problems - their nature and their causes. !And spend less time on designing solutions. ===

Allow me to be a contrarian by asking: Must everything be motivating and engaging? !This painting by Edouard Manet sheds some light on this question. !It is the 1870s, and a favorite gathering place for artists and intellectuals was the cafe. !Manet would hang out at the Cafe de La Nouvelle-Athenes in Paris’ Pigalle neighborhood, where two tables were always reserved for Manet, Degas, Renoir and their contemporaries. The chief attraction of the cafe was a huge dead rat painted on the ceiling. !Titled The Plum, this painting shows one of Manet's models sitting at this cafe in 1877. !Simple with strong lines; the mood is powerful. !

Boredomisn’t so bad

Furthermore, boredom isn’t so bad. !Research suggests that entering a numbed trance allows the brain to be productive and creative. !From experiments in the 1970s, psychiatrists had research participants complete word-association tasks. !When granted more time, participants began offering much more creative solutions, as though the boredom “had the power to exert pressure on individuals to stretch their inventive capacity.” !Therefore, if your audience is bored, you are in fact giving them the gift of creativity, inventiveness, and fantasy. === !Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/health/research/05mind.html?_r=0 and

let’s look to theory

for

motivational triggers

Now back to motivation. !Motivating an audience can be a black box system. <click> So we reviewed empirically-tested theories on learning and motivation to identify those elements that trigger motivation. ===

Individual and Internal Environment

Social and External Environment

Rational Cognitive Emotional

We identified 14 elements associated with learning motivation. !These constructs can be conceptualized along four dimensions. !At the top, there are individual and internal environments.   At the bottom, social forces and your external environment can shape motivation as well. !Next, there are rational and cognitive elements. But people are poets, not robots, so our emotional life plays an important role as well. !As we cultivate motivation, it’s helpful to address all four of these dimensions. ===

Individual and Internal Environment

Social and External Environment

Rational Cognitive Emotional

Expectancy Value

Needs and Goals

Affect Personal interest

Intrinsic motivationAttributions Self-efficacy

Mastery goal orientation

Performance goal orientation

Social influence Situational interest

Models Extrinsic motivation

Here are the 14 triggers mapped along the four dimensions. !Some of the elements fall into a distinct quadrant, and some of them straddle two. !To cultivate motivation, it is helpful to employ approaches that address these four dimensions and that balance their forces. !We are going to review these elements, and you can follow along in your handout with the table. ===

A+

Expectancy Value

Expectancy and value. !If we expect or believe that we can accomplish a task, we are more likely to engage in that activity. !And if we see value in a task, if we believe we can get something out of it, we will engage. !Therefore, our audience will be motivated if they see value in the activity and if they expect to be successful. !So what can we do? !For expectancy, break an activity into smaller components so it appears easier. Each step should be challenging but not overwhelming. !In terms of value, provide learning experiences that are authentic and demonstrate real-world applications. In the Chemistry 108 library session I teach, we complete exercises that mimic the work and the topics that they will be addressing in their lab reports. !

Attributions perceptions of causes of outcomes

Attributions theory posits that people want to understand why certain experiences happen to them? !People make attributions about their learning all the time. One person who has had a negative experience might attribute it to his own stupidity. But another person with a similar experience may attribute it to a bad day or the peculiar difficulty of the task. !Our explanations of why things happen to us shape our behavior and engagement. !Here are some tips. !Try to provide feedback on audience performance. Help your audience to contextualize what just happened. For example, tell a student "you ran a good database search because you spent a lot of time identifying keywords beforehand.” !Next, help your audience understand why bizarre results or mistakes happen. For example, “you didn’t get good search results because you did X”

Models Self-efficacy

Social influence

Social cognitive theory outlines three prominent motivational variables. !Social influence is one. When we work with other people, we have more fun. We get support and we feel a sense of obligation to fellow team members. !Next, people follow models and social prompts. We learn by watching and following others. For example, there are news reports of very young children who have seen the Heimlich maneuver performed on a TV sitcom and later they’re able to rescue an adult who is choking. !And self-efficacy is important. This is our perceptions that we are capable of learning or performing a given task. That we can do it. !To leverage social influence, encourage teamwork for learning or project activities, check in with the groups to foster accountability, and assign responsibilities to individual team members.

Needs and goals

Mastery orientation

Performance orientation

Other theories address goals and goal orientation. !We have different needs and goals that we want to satisfy. (In fact, that are only 24 categories of goals that people strive for, and some of them are definitely rated NC-17 or criminal.) !Then there is goal orientation. !Towards academic work, students can adopt a mastery orientation where they focus on learning and the mastery of the content. !In contrast, a performance orientation focuses on demonstrating ability, getting good grades or rewards, or besting other students. !Tips? !Articulate the relevance of the topic or the learning activity to your audience's goals and needs. !

AffectPersonal interest Situational interest

Here are some softer motivational triggers. !There is personal interest. For example, I love mass rapid transport, and I am happiest visiting places with extensive subway systems. !Then there is situational interest, which is contextual and generated by features of our immediate environment - like interesting texts or pictures in a presentation. !Affect is the emotions and moods that we experience. This has a powerful role on our motivation. !Some tips. !To pique your audience’s personal interest, offer a choice in learning activities, and let them choose. Encourage personalization and customization of activities. Ask what people are interested in and incorporate that into the discussion. !

Intrinsic motivation Extrinsic motivation

Finally, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. !With intrinsic motivation, we are engaging in an activity for its own sake. We work on a task because we find it enjoyable. !With extrinsic motivation, we are engaging in an activity as a means to an end. We participate for desirable outcomes like rewards, praise, or avoidance of punishment. !To cultivate intrinsic motivation: Pose the learning or activity as a challenge with clear goals and rewards. Also, pique your audience's curiosity - present surprising or incongruous information. Next, provide your audience with a sense of control over the activity. And finally, engage your audience with fantasy, such as simulations and games. !For greater extrinsic motivation, relate the learning or activity to organizational expectations and procedures. Tell students that this session today will help them accomplish X and Y as required by their professor.

Before we move to our case study activity, here is a painting to spotlight the importance of motivation. !The painter Andrew Wyeth was a watercolorist until he hit a "real turning point" in his life and found that water color could no longer carry his deep emotion. !That turning point was in 1945, when his father, the painter N.C. Wyeth was killed when the car he was driving stalled on the railroad tracks near the family home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and he was hit by an oncoming train. !Titled Winter, 1946, this painting was Wyeth’s first in tempera medium after his father's death. !A young teenage boy dressed as an aviator plunges headlong down a wide brown hill.   He is off balance and out of control, his hand flung out and his shadow following. !He is about to cross a road made by the ruts of a vehicle, perhaps by his father's car. !

1. Read the case.

2. Underline the problems.

3. Determine an underlying cause

and propose a solution. (Refer to your handout.)

Now let’s begin our first case study activity. !We will start by working together as a large group. !<click> Let’s first take a couple of minutes to read Case Study 1. <pause 2 minutes> !<click> Now let’s individually re-read the case, and underline segments of the text that indicate low motivation problems or something that will lead to a motivation problem. <pause 3 minutes> !<click> Now review these problems, and determine an underlying cause from your handout. For example, is it an expectancy issue, a value issue, or so forth?

Engage the social, individual, emo- tional, cognitive

I hope you’ve had helpful discussions. !To conclude today: !You have a handout to help you diagnose motivational problems, and there are tips for their resolution. !If you want more detail, check out the two books listed in your handout. !For a succinct summary, I have a haiku poem on motivating your audience. <click> !Engage the social, individual, emo- tional, cognitive ===