Motivation Is Probably One of the Most

¶ … Motivation is probably one of the most important factors affecting a student's learning progress and achievement in school. For this reason, it is the chief concern of teachers today as most of them fail to understand how to generate interest in a course or lesson without using the common threats and retaliatory tools such as grades, poor remarks, expulsion etc.

Rinne, Carl H. (1998) in his article 'Motivating students is a percentage game', it appears, has managed to reach what can be called the root cause of motivation and has been able to unearth some important components of this highly sought after characteristic. Rinne feels that the best way to motivate a student to focus on the 'intrinsic appeals' of a lesson as he declares, "Teachers need to discuss the intrinsic appeals of lesson content to motivate students to learn." The article has been written with a clear idea of what the author hopes to achieve from it and what he wants he readers to gain from his findings and this is the reason, it is not only interesting but a precious piece of writing which most teachers are likely to find very useful.

Every teacher will agree that capturing and sustaining interest in a lesson is one of the most common problems faced by them in the classroom. They know their lessons well and are more than willing to impart knowledge to their students knowing fully well that students will stand to benefit from the lesson. However this is something that students may not be willing to accept if the lesson sounds dull or fails to capture their interest. This puts the teacher in a tricky situation, how to generate interest in the lesson and how to motivate students to learn.

Motivation is the key here and can single-handedly solve all learning related problems. If the students feels motivated, he will be willing to devote more time to the lesson, will take an active interest in the contents and will be interested in making some contribution to the lesson and related research. But how many self-motivated students are there? Rinne believes very few. He writes that while there are certainly a few students who are "...always agreeable and willing to do whatever their teachers ask of them." They are motivated by "such extrinsic rewards as grades, praise, prizes, and privileges." But such students are few since the large majority is basically "unpredictable. Their motivation varies with the day, the place, and the conjunction of planets and causes teachers to shake their heads and recite the familiar saying "You can't make them learn if they don't want to learn."

The article focuses on the components of motivation that are likely to keep a student interested in a lesson. Sustained interest is a lesson is the key to deeper learning and better absorption of knowledge. The author therefore discusses these components of motivation in detail and makes it clear that not all components are important for every student. One or two key ingredients are enough to generate and sustain interest in the lesson. These components are called 'intrinsic appeals'. The author believes that motivation research has mostly focused on motivation from three different angles. While some researchers have dealt with learner traits, others have paid attention to educator characteristics yet a third group has focused on intrinsic appeals and the author falls in this last category of researchers. This group deals with "...characteristics of lesson content that appeal to student motivation: readability and comprehensibility; incongruity and complexity; novelty and challenge; variety, novelty, suspense, and feedback; and identification, security, anticipation, competition, surprise, and feedback."

These intrinsic appeals are simply cues that a teacher can use to generate and sustain interest in a project. The degree to which a student would be motivated depends on the number of cues he responds to. "Such a student might get "really hooked" when the powers of several appeals combine, for the laws of probability are at work here: motivating students is a percentage game." This is the most interesting concept that author has come up with. Motivation is a percentage game, according to Rinne, which means that motivation level differ from student to student and this is what determines their achievement level and desire to learn. Percentage game is an interesting concept but the author has not delved very deep into it, which makes it whole concept somewhat ambiguous.

Rinne has however paid discussed the main topic of her article in great details i.e. intrinsic appeals. The author has been very clear about what he means by intrinsic appeals and has given sound examples in each case. He starts with novelty and explains why novelty is important in motivating a student. Novelty is 'unpredictable' and something that introduces the student to new possibilities. When a teacher introduces innovation and experimentation in the classroom, he can easily capture student's interest. By doing the same tasks differently, he removes the air of boredom that generally permeates regular lessons and makes the student sit up and take notice. But novelty can only be used as the first step, which must be backed up with some other technique in order to sustain interest. The author believes that novelty can soon wear off and thus requires the help of other techniques. However it can play an important role in attracting student's attention.

The other important components or techniques of motivation are surprise, anticipation, feedback etc. All of these help in generating interest and may or may not be capable of sustaining interest for a long time. For example while novelty tends to wear off, so does surprise but anticipation, feedback and security have a lasting impact. If a teacher manages to capture student's interest in a lesson by using novelty and surprise techniques, he/she will need to back it up with anticipation or feedback in order to keep the students motivated for a long period of time.

The author uses substantial research material to support his views on motivation but his key concepts are his own and this quite original. While we may be familiar with these concepts, Rinne has made a commendable effort to bring them all together under the umbrella of motivation. His article is worth reading more than once for while the reader may not agree with all concepts and their significance, he is likely to find them worth pondering since they are simple to apply and implement. The best and probably the most useful suggestion appears in the form of security cue. Rinne explains that while it is important to do simple tasks in a different manner and introducing students to new possibilities that they never thought were there, it is also equally important to incorporate the security cue in order not to make the task intimidating or threatening. Most students are unwilling to participate actively in new tasks because of the fear of what they might be expected to do or achieve. For this reason, it is important to begin a new activity by connecting with something that the student is already familiar with.