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All posts tagged teaching

Four Basic Learning Needs

by Kurt Wright on May 13, 2015 in Teaching with Comments Off on Four Basic Learning Needs

There are four basic learning needs outlined by Ormrod (2011) that serve as the foundation for several different educational theories, including behaviorism and social cognitivism all the way to constructivism and basic cognitive theory. These four needs are Arousal, Competence, Self-Determination, and Relatedness (Ormrod, 2011, p. 365-72). By incorporating gaming as a structure to put around our content, we as teachers can meet several of these needs simultaneously in a way that traditional classrooms may not.

Arousal: The need for arousal is the need to be engaged in an activity. Games have a natural way to engage human beings, because they are actually fun, which some content simply is not for students. Additionally, though, Ormrod (2011) suggests to meet this need that teachers should “plan classroom activities that keep students continually active, either physically or cognitively” (p. 366). I am yet to play a game that asks the player to actively sit still and do absolutely nothing for an extended period of time. By adopting the attribute of activity that games have, you keep your students not only busy but engaged in learning. If they complete the first hurtle, make sure it’s clear that there’s another accomplishment around the corner that they could be working toward.

Competence (or Self-Worth): The need for competence and self-worth is a person’s need to both feel that they can “deal effectively with their environment” and hold the belief that “they are good, capable individuals” (p. 366-8). In a previous blog post, I wrote about the importance of students developing mastery goals for this very reason. In a game, students understand that game over is never really the end of the game, but an opportunity to try again and win the second time around (or third, for gamers with my level of skill). However, in a traditional classroom, students can often feel that they get only one chance at success. By introducing a gaming structure to the classroom, students can understand that one bad grade isn’t really the end, and having the opportunity to work hard to change it improves student self-efficacy, self-worth, and helps to meet the need for competence.

Self-Determination: The need for self-determination is the need for autonomy and self-direction (Ormrod, 2011, p. 368). Many new teachers ask how we can meet this need for self-determination without undermining our own authority and essentially giving power over to the students. Ormrod (2011) suggests a two ways that we can still maintain control while meeting this need: presenting rules and instructions in an informational rather than a controlling manner and provide opportunities for individual work and structured decision making (p. 369-70). Board games teach you how to successfully complete the game. Their rules are there to help the players have fun during the game. In the same way, we should introduce our rules as tools for students to reference to be successful learners. To meet this need, it is just as important that we understand the reasoning behind our rules as it is that our students do.

Relatedness: The need for relatedness is the need to feel “socially connected and to secure the love and respect of others” (Ormrod, 2011, p. 371). Luckily, just by having a gamified classroom, you show even students who don’t enjoy games that you care about whether or not they learn, and build on the students’ social need for relatedness. You show students that you’re willing to show them that you’re willing to geek out with them and reveal those personal interests that you don’t traditionally find in the classroom. In response, many students will feel more comfortable with you as a teacher and be more productive learners as well.

These four needs all have one goal in mind: make the classroom a place where learning is as effective and as efficient as it can possibly be. So, to any teachers reading this blog and having difficulties with a student with whom you have tried everything: I ask you to look back at these four basic needs before you try to introduce a new punishment system to the classroom or making your rules more strict in an unruly room. Is the student interested in any part of the learning process? Does the student feel that he or she can actually meet your standards? Does the student feel like he or she has a voice in your classroom? Finally, does the student feel like he or she is alone in your classroom or a part of the community?

 

Ormrod, J. (2011). Educational psychology: Developing learners 7th edition. Boston: Pearson Education.

High Expectations

by Kurt Wright on April 23, 2015 in Motivation, Teaching with Comments Off on High Expectations

Games can be hard. And that is alright.images

I once ran a simple one-shot (isolated, episodic) session of Dungeons & Dragons with my friends. I established a hook for them to go and investigate the woods and eventually run into a goblin raiding party and a goblin war camp for some experience. When I was designing the war camp, I realized part way through that the difficulty of the area was beyond a simple group of level 1 adventurers, so in the margins of my notes about the quest, I included some places where a non-player character (NPC) could swoop in and help my friends out.

imagesImagine my surprise when the adventurers, through their cunning alone, decided to set fire to the surrounding forested area, smoke the goblins out, and defeat the war camp boss with no problems and several trophies to bring home and sell for gold. I imagine how bored my players would have been if I had placed their “savior” in the main text instead of the margins-the players would have been put in the margins instead and would not have felt the same sense of accomplishment upon completing the quest. What I did by keeping that NPC in the margins where he belonged was hold high expectations for my players.

Many teachers fall into a very simple trap when they are asked about whether or not they have “high expectations” for their students. I am referring to “high expectations” here as opposed to “high standards,” which is an all-too-common misunderstanding among teachers new and old. So, let’s turn to the dictionary for some help with the difference:

1. Standard: The fourth definition, the one which most closely aligns with education, is “the average or normal requirement, quality, quantity, level, grade, etc.”

2. Expectation: Coming from the word “expect.” The first definition listed for “expect” is “to look forward to; regard as likely to happen; anticipate the occurrence or coming of.”

While these two definitions may be similar, there’s a very valuable difference in expectation. Expectation is the anticipation that students will meet a standard. Therefore, high expectations implies that the teacher believes that their high standards can be met by their students. Belief is absolutely key, and if a teacher doesn’t believe that his or her students will rise to the challenge and accomplish that standard, those students are being set up to not meet those high standards.

 

Counting Coins: Token Economies at Work

by Kurt Wright on April 2, 2015 in Uncategorized with Comments Off on Counting Coins: Token Economies at Work

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Here’s a list of some of the more popular games that I’ve had the pleasure of playing: Mario 64, Baldur’s Gate, Warcraft 3, Dokapon Kingdom, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The genre of these games range from action role playing games to real time strategies to family fun games to fantasy adventures. And what do they all have in common? Gold (some blue and red coins too, if we’re talking about Mario 64). Why, as players in these games, are we drawn to gold? By design, the game has us collect gold so that we can spend it for weapons, potions, equipment, and other advantages that help us ultimately beat the game.

But you don’t need gold for this concept to apply. Most games have a store system where players can spend all of that hard-won currency, which we’ll refer to as tokens. This store system principle is in so many games and in ways that you might not expect. When you level up in Diablo III, you’re spending that experience you’ve earned in the same way to level up your character the way that you want to, constantly giving the player options to fine-tune his or her strategy to beat the game.

maxresdefaultSo what does this mean for teachers? It means that you can hand out tokens to reinforce good behavior, improvement from one test to the next, or for completing classwork or homework neatly and timely. Ormrod (2011) defines a token economy as a technique to allow students to “purchase” a variety of other reinforcers (p. 303). The options of reinforcers are completely under the teacher’s control. I have encountered several cheap, effective reinforcers that your students may appreciate more than you might think. Here’s a list to get your own shop started:

1. Small snacks: crackers, candy, you name it (as long as the kid isn’t allergic)

2. Large snacks: brownies, sandwiches

3. Allowance to listen to music during individual assignments/testing

4. Terrific Kid Card: Send the student home with a card he can show his parent/guardian listing his achievements in the class.

These are just a few examples. While implementing a token economy is valuable to manage behavior, its real worth is found in the soft skills that it helps students develop. Two of the major soft skills it helps are accountability and self-regulation. Students can learn accountability through being responsible for tracking their own tokens (or even keeping track of cheap, physical tokens you give them) until they have enough to purchase whatever reinforcers you have on sale.

Second, implementing an economy like this teaches self-regulation, or “the control and monitoring of our own behavior” (Ormrod, 2011, p. 342). The Store you have in place is only open on the students’ time-when they’ve met the expectations you’ve already established for class. This means that you could simply require students to finish their work or act a certain way for the opportunity to spend the tokens they’ve earned during the year. This practice can teach students to pay attention to their own progress during class and time management, because they will want to accomplish their work within the time given and the quality you expect in order to buy reinforcers from your Store.

These are just a few examples of how token economies can work in a classroom. I invite all teachers interested in implementing this technique to use these ideas for tokens and reinforcers, come up with their own, or combine them with their own students and see the effect it has in the classroom.

 

Ormrod, J. E. (2011). Educational psychology: Developing learners. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

Learning Strategies: It’s Super Effective!

by Kurt Wright on March 25, 2015 in Teaching, Uncategorized with Comments Off on Learning Strategies: It’s Super Effective!

Another thing that games teach us is to use the right technique, element, tool, weapon, or strategy for the job. In Pokemon, why do we use water-type techniques against fire-type pokemon and avoid using them on grass-type pokemon? Because it’s super effective! This same kind of mentality can and should be applied inside of the classroom.hqdefault

Students are encouraged almost every day by their teachers to study right or to study harder; however, many students may still lack the correct study skills to succeed in a specific classroom where a specific teacher is trying to teach to a specific standard or objective. Often enough, these learning skills can be more practical and transferrable than the actual content.

Learning skills can be divided into different categories. Ormrod (2011) divides them into overt and covert learning strategies. She defines overt learning strategies as strategies that are “readily apparent” and observable by the teacher and covert learning strategies as “only mental activity” and thus not directly observable like overt learning strategies. Many times, these strategies overlap to assist one another in teaching students. For example, a strategy that Dr. Ormrod suggests to improve writing is creating summaries while one of her covert strategies is to regularly monitor one’s own learning.

I recently did an experiment for a project in one of my classrooms, dividing my classmates into three separate groups while an expert performed a simple kata (a set of specific, chronological motions in a martial arts style). I instructed each group to use a different learning strategy-taking notes on what they saw, summarizing what they saw, or actively shadowing what they saw. The groups were immediately given time to practice for two minutes before demonstrating what they learned to the classroom, and the vast majority practiced by moving their physical bodies in an attempt to reproduce our expert’s maneuvers. These college students were practiced in adopting the most appropriate or effective learning strategy and using it to accomplish their goal (reproducing the martial arts motions).

Imagine the difficulty that they would have had if their practice time had been limited to only reviewing their notes or summaries while the physically practicing group could continue to use the strategy found to be most effective.

Students have developed varying strategies through their academic careers before stepping into each teacher’s classroom, and they are limited by the strategies that they currently have and their ability to distinguish between effective versus ineffective strategies. As teachers, it’s important to recognize that our students don’t walk around with strategy guides in their back pockets with the best way to tackle every new concept, assignment, project, or test that we throw at them. Therefore, it’s important to understand what they do bring to the table and what techniques we bring to the table to help them be super effective in our classroom and classrooms that follow.