Landing : Athabascau University

How to demotivate students (slides from EdMedia 2016)

Slides from my presentation at EdMedia 2016 in which I discuss ways that our educational systems are systematically antagonistic to intrinsic motivation thanks to physics and path dependencies, and how it makes no sense to transfer pedagogies born of necessity to an e-learning context where the fuzzy boundaries mean they cannot even apply (and in which it is even more harmful than when face to face to use reward and punishment to drive learning). On the other hand, there are some useful things done by educational systems that are well worth keeping. The slides conclude with suggestions of ways to retain benefits of universities and schools while largely overcoming their structural failings, first within individual courses, then within whole institutions. (8MB download)

Comments

  • Jon,

    I wish I had been able to see this presentation "live," but am happy to be able to see the slides. It is always amazing to me that these fundamentals about motivation seem either absent from conversations about learning or are overpowered by unexamined assumptions.

    Gerald

    Gerald Ardito July 1, 2016 - 6:24am

  • Thanks Gerald! Yes - I suspect it is so deeply embedded that we don't see it for what it is, or just assume it is a given over which we have no control. But we do.

    Jon Dron July 2, 2016 - 4:12pm

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