Dr. Robert Chatt from Westfield State University in Massachusetts presented at the Lilly Conference last year an asynchronous session on an approach they are using to increase motivation in a finance course. I had the opportunity to watch this session this evening and enjoyed Chatt’s honesty and conversational tone as well as enthusiasm for the approach they are using. Why is motivation important? Chatt reviewed some research on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is typically used to describe motivation to do an activity because we get enjoyment and fulfillment from doing it. Extrinsic motivation is when activity is rewarded by outside incentives or because you want to avoid a punishment. Chatt mentioned that research studies document that intrinsic motivation improves student retention (the citation mentioned was Bodkyn and Stevens 2015). However, used incorrectly or overdoing extrinsic motivation can reduce the desire to learn. This is further complicated in a remote setting: Chatt mentioned the difficulties of trying to read visual student attention cues using videoconferencing. Chatt then described a system he uses that introduces classroom currency he calls tickets awarded for participation and completing desired activities/behaviors. Students can then exchange currency for rewards, including skipping a quiz, for example. Chatt has “levels” for different challenges: difficult tasks or those requiring more and longer engagement may he awarded more “tickets”. Chatt described his system and how tickets are tracked. Interestingly, Chatt discussed creative ways of introducing classroom currency into an online course using Zoom. Examples he mentioned include Zoom polls and forms used to earn tickets to “buy” classroom privileges (“buy out of classroom homework”). Chatt emphasized that he uses “tickets” and not money to refer to the classroom currency to avoid the notion of buying grades. Raffle tickets can be used too. The unit of classroom currency has different denominations for different activities ranging from attendance to answering challenging reading questions. Chatt mentioned wanting to try classroom currency with different types of questions asked in an online format. Chatt noted better attendance, participation, and overall engagement. I enjoyed learning about this system, and appreciate how he connected this to helping people engage and find a “flow” state balancing difficulty and interest since I listened to the book “Finding Flow” by Csikszentmihalhi. I also learned about different question types during online sessions using clickers: attendance and attention, reading, understanding, and challenge. I’m curious to learn how Chatt improves this approach and starts conducting empirical studies.
