The incentives of certificates, rewards, pins, honor rolls,
and particularly grades are essentially extrinsic. These extrinsic devices,
according to research, do
not have the value of such intrinsic
rewards as satisfaction, pride in one's own accomplishment, and the contribution
of the individual toward group achievement. Based on my own teaching experience
and on research, I concluded that intrinsic incentives are definitely
superior to their extrinsic counterparts. To verify this with my keyboarding
students, I proceeded to experiment with my class. I quickly found that
my keyboarding students responded most effectively to the incentives of
"competing" with themselves.
Their initial contact with self-competition was a surprise to students.
They were unaccustomed to the notion that they were competing with their
own past records. One effective method that alleviated the initial shock
of self-competition was to set up a contest between the fictitious characters
"I" and "Me." "I" was administered the first timed-writing and this
information was recorded. The second timed-writing was administered to "Me"
who attempted to key more words than "I". The third timed-writing was then
administered to "I" who had a higher goal to reach in order to win over "Me".
This endeavor continued until a substantial increase in words occurred and
winners of the contest were determined, who in reality, were the students
themselves.
Perhaps the most effective intrinsic motivational device that I found
was my
own positive approach to learning. The positive attitude was
manifested in a variety of ways in the classroom. I began by making
up my mind to praise my students for their small successes instead of rebuking
them for their failures. The results were surprising. It is my experience
that if I praised students' small successful endeavors, they would more
readily attempt further improvement until they reached a level of acceptable
autonomy. On the other hand, constant rebuke for failures built an almost
impenetrable wall between the students and me. Climbing this wall in order
to help students did not turn out to be an easy educational endeavor.
From the first to the last day in the keyboarding class, I took advantage
of every opportunity to engender intrinsic motivation in my students
and to build self-confidence in their ability to learn to keyboard. "Always
remember," I hammered into their heads, "if your mind can
conceive
it, and your heart can
believe it, then you can
achieve
it it because YOU are somebody!"
Learning and
intrinsic motivation
must not be divorced; otherwise, students are the ultimate victims of
the unfortunate consequences.
