Can choice enhance motivation?

            As we talk about the many overarching themes or ideas in the course, we always bring up the idea of motivation in all of them. One of the biggest questions we have encountered is how do we motivate children to do well on the standardized tests? But before we can start motivating students to do well on these tests, we need to motivate them to want to learn and be successful in school. But how do we do this? In class on Monday, we talked about the idea of choice in the classroom for students. Does giving the students choice in the classroom on assignments, what they want to study, and how they want to learn, a realistic idea? If including my own personal beliefs was enough to convince everyone else, I would say it is a no brainer that including choice in the classroom is a greater motivator. In the last two semesters that I have taken at OSU, I have taken two literature courses in which I was given a generously limited choice on what to read and how to present projects to the class. Given the choice on almost everything in the class, I was easily more motivated to take the time to read the books and do the assignments to the best of my abilities.

            I found an article at, http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/instructional-design/giving-students-a-choice-in-assignments-can-boost-creativity-and-motivation/, which talks about how choice can increase creativity and motivation. The article mentions how many students are limited on their divergent thinking and creativity when they are given specific guidelines from a teacher on an assignment. However, if students are given the option to, “solve problems, find novel and varied stimulation, and communicate ideas and/or values,” they will be more likely to enhance their creativity and motivation on an assignment or project. Reading on in to the article, there is an outline for teachers to use for a semester long project and how to create choice in these projects. A book referenced in the article itself says that, “autonomy, mastery, and purpose,” help to motivate students. I think this article is extremely important to keep in mind. When we want to motivate our students, we have to remember that they want power/choice in the classroom as well. If we limit our students to only one mindset, we limit their creativity and thus limit their motivation on learning and being successful in school.