Practical Lessons in Motivation

I am finding the further we progress in the semester, the more recent the philosophies we discuss, the more relevant I find them to be to my day-to-day teaching experiences. This is especially true as we get into more detailed perspectives of cognition –particularly with this week’s readings on the trilogy of the mind (Hilgard), motivation (Maslow; Harter; Schunk; Atkinson), and self-efficacy (Bandura). While the readings touched on much more, these three elements struck me as significant areas of cognitivism and significant to my own approach to instructional design.
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Motivation, especially, stood out to me as a missing component to my current design practices. We have talked in class in relation to cognitive approaches about the frame of reference with which we approach tasks. I very firmly approach tasks and lessons in this class with a library frame of reference, and it was no different for me while I was reading this week’s assigned chapters. Instruction librarians are often not in classes for the entire semester but rather, similar to when Lucy Rush visited us in Week 4, come in for one session that we call one-shot IL sessions. The condensed nature of these one-shot sessions make it difficult to understand our audience and their motivation for learning.

I believe many instructors, as Dr. Luo did, invite librarians to class to prepare students for specific assignments, which automatically increases the relevance of our lesson. However, this is not always the case and a majority of instructors I deal with invite librarians to teach by means of a general introduction to the library and research. And, while I love the library and find any and all library-related topics fascinating, I know it is similar to the camouflage lesson example in Driscoll—seemingly irrelevant and a snoozer of a topic to many. Examining my lesson plans from the perspective of Keller’s ARCS model is going to be an extremely beneficial way of approaching this variety of one-shots in my future. Without an assignment to tie library research to an immediately relevant situation to students’ lives, I need to provide greater transparency about how library research will be relevant to students as they progress in college. In addition, it will be important to start off the lesson with an example or anecdote to grab students’ attention! The one area of the ARCS model that will be difficult to manage in the one-shot session is Satisfaction. I will not be present when students determine if and how to use the library content I teach, but I can create a hypothetical scenario for students to gain practice and estimate their satisfaction levels.

I have continued to make progress on my literature review—having the 10 articles due soon is helpful to ensure I am consistently working on this assignment! I think it has been helpful, since I am tying this review into a larger research project I am working on, to focus just on identifying trends in the literature rather than jumping ahead to other areas that I will eventually need to work on. Gaining this focus will help me feel more productive and less overwhelmed!
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I also just wanted to say, I appreciated Dr. Stefaniak’s lecture about situated cognition during Week 5. It helped prepare me for the Dr. Luo’s Week 6 lecture and contextualized the readings for that week. I have already started using Articulation in my instructional practices to wonderful effect! It is such an easy way to encourage self-reflection and check in with students’ comprehension.