Motivation and blogging assignments
A quick update on my students’ blogging. Students are doing a good job of finding good techie articles; some do a better job of summarizing than others, but the one thing that worries me is that I’m not seeing much personal reaction to the stories, which is what I’m after. If a student writes on a privacy issue I would like to read opinion, or to see the student make a leap out of the technology box to talk about the bigger issues.
I originally intended the blog to be a checklist in the gradebook, although it is worth points. So, if you complete the weekly blog assignments on time, you earn the points. Now I’m debating whether I should add some qualifiers to the assignment: provide a link the the article; summarize the article in one paragraph; write your personal reaction in two or three paragraphs; comment on at least two classmates’ posts. I would have to grade each post according to the criteria, which is something I want to avoid.
I can’t remember the source but I recently read about external rewards killing intrinsic motivation. The study involved college students who enjoyed playing cards. When some students were paid to play, they reported less enjoyment than those who were not paid. Or something like that. Source, anybody?
The point is, will a grading scheme turn students away from blogging and RSS? I don’t want them to view their blog assignments as a chore, which is probably how I’d view it if I started grading their posts. I’m officially opening my suggestion box.
April 27th, 2004 - 4:31 pm
I’d say that if your students are used to being graded based on points, that they’ll bring the same expectation to their blogging. If you ignore that expectation, you’ll probably torpedo the project. There’s no point in getting overly dainty and idealistic just because you’re using a new technology.