Rebranding Homework

Learning physics requires practice. Problem solving is a brain skill, and it needs to be developed and refined.

Every semester I tell my new group of grade 11 physics students that the course will seem especially hard at first because it requires them to think in a different way. I often have students who are typically very good in science coming to see me after school worried because they are not doing as well as they would like.  I try to reassure them and tell them that if they continue to work hard, their mark will go up, but they will need to have the patience to develop new skills.

My students are expected to complete problem set questions during each unit in order to practice problem solving skills. The questions are all posted at the beginning of the unit and students are given time in class to work independently or in groups to solve the problems. I collect the problem sets to gain a better sense of where students are struggling, but the problem sets are not “for marks” – I don’t believe in grading students on tasks that are designed for practice. However, as many teachers know, teenagers don’t tend to put forward their best effort if they know the task doesn’t “count.”

Recently, I have been trying to think about ways to motivate students. In an ideal world (or classroom), students would see the immediate value in their effort to practice new skills. Most often though, students tell me after the final exam that they wish they had tried harder (which breaks my heart because I know they could have tried harder too).

The other day, I was watching a TED talk by Rory Sutherland called Life Lessons From an Ad Man. In it he explains that, “many problems in life can be solved by tinkering with perception.”  It is a very amusing talk and it is worth watching just for the enjoyment of it, but his talk got me thinking about how I could rebrand homework to motivate students.

Rory Sutherland explains that in consumer culture, “the interface” fundamentally determines behaviour. (For example, if you want to encourage impulse buying, put chocolate bars in the line at the checkout counter – the interface makes it easy to be seduced!)  More importantly though, Rory explains that if you want to change behaviour, then it’s simply a question of changing the interface by which people make decisions!

The way I see it, this is the “interface” my students have with homework:

  • Mostly independent work
  • Boring
  • Not empowering
  • No immediate reward for completing
  • No immediate punishment for not completing
  • No immediate value

No wonder they don’t want to do homework … who would?!?!?

Although I do not have a full plan as yet, I am going to try a new approach to motivate students by incorporating some elements of Web 2.0 into the problem sets.  I plan to set up a wiki page designated to each problem set.  On the wiki, there will be forums to encourage dialogue about the problem set.  Even more than that, each question on the problem set will have  a separate sub-page where students can develop and share the solution.  The solution page will include space for:

  • a scanned copy of a student’s solution
  • a written explanation in simple language
  • a video of students solving the question and explaining the solution as they go along
  • a rating scale for students to evaluate the usefulness of the solution (I have been playing around with Google Forms and I think I can make this work pretty easily)

If Rory is right – that changing the interface changes behaviour – then I hope incorporating social elements into the problem set will encourage students to become more engaged with the process.

I’m excited and anxious at the same time.  I know that if I do not structure the site well, or if contributing to the site is overly cumbersome for students, they aren’t going to use it.  To all readers, help me make this a success!  What are your thoughts?  What am I not thinking about?

Image Credit:  zaui

17. May 2010 by Graham Whisen
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  1. Pingback: Tweets that mention Rebranding Homework | ideaconnect -- Topsy.com

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