| Chieh on Education / Rewards and Education It is very important to place even more emphasis on the reward system because reward has everything to do with motivation. Human nature drives our efforts toward the results that we desire. In the WOW case, the rewards provided by Blizzard have great effect on motivation. In the Blizzard example, they essentially created a buffet of different quests to choose from. Each quest delineates ahead of time its reward as well as the effort required to accomplish that task. So right off the bat, the user makes the decision if the quest is worth the effort. This is such an important concept; let me repeat it more clearly. Even before going on a quest, the user has already seen and internalized the final reward. By this simple act of accepting this particular task from a myriad of other tasks, the user has subconsciously decided that the final reward is worth the effort, and hence has subconsciously produced the motivation required to carry out the quest. Of course, once the project is launched, there will be many obstacles that may discourage the user, but this is the key formula Blizzard uses to create that initial motivation, and users are convinced they are acting under their own free will. This is how Blizzard was able to engage such a wide variety of people with a single game. They knew that different people have different motivations, so instead of trying to find that single magic motivator that entices everybody, they simply allowed users to find their own motivator to play the game. Looking at this in terms of our education system, we have been trying to answer the question of what motivates students, but in my opinion, there's no such thing as a silver bullet that would work for every student. Everybody is different, and everybody wants different things. So if we are going to engage students in the same way that our entertainment industry has engaged them, we too must offer them a market of motivations. Let them pick and choose their own motivation, and channel that motivation toward a goal. Comparing our education system to the entertainment industry, I see three immediate differences. First, we have neglected to spend more time on engaging our kids to enjoy learning. Second, we have given our kids the wrong reason for learning. Third, needless to say, we definitely don't give our kids a large selection of motivators. And to a certain degree, there really isn't a built-in motivator in a TOE system. Our current system doesn't take into account the psychological aspect of this “democratic motivation scheme.” Instead, it currently works very similarly to a communistic regime in that students are simply told what to care about—namely grades, test scores, college, and jobs. Have you ever noticed that the motivators we have been giving our children have nothing to do with the knowledge itself? What does getting good grades have to do with history, biology, and art? Grades are nothing but numbers, and we all know this. It is a horrible motivator for this very reason. Does it make sense if someone tells you to shovel the snow in the driveway so you can get a number? It would make a lot more sense if they tell you to shovel the snow so you can park the car in the garage. In both cases, the same act of shoveling the snow gets done, but it makes a heck of a lot more sense to do it in the latter case. Similarly, in education, if we do not build a more direct link between what we teach and its usage, it doesn't make sense for our kids to learn. In a TOE system, we are telling our kids to care about things that have nothing to do with the actual learning. The goal of a TOE system is learning for the sake of knowledge and future usage. This is a very laudable reason, but we simply cannot expect every kid to come to this same conclusion. Very few people are motivated to act in this moment for some future event. I will not clean my room unless somebody is going to visit soon. What motivates people is the urgency of now. If there's something they want, or if there's something they are trying to accomplish, they will be a lot more motivated to act. And this is where we have to start: by changing the motivator to make the purpose of learning clearer. Without a clear purpose for learning, the urgency of now dies and motivation disappears. When we were discussing how we could create a hybrid of TOE and GOE, the goal-orientated nature of GOE is what we wanted to keep. What this means for us is that instead of having classes, our model should have projects, and the end goal of those projects should be designed so that learning becomes an inevitable byproduct. Also, the end goal as well as the amount of effort required should be clearly presented to the students ahead of time. That way, kids will be able to decide for themselves if the end goal is worth their effort. This is an important first step in engaging our kids to learn, by giving them a reasonable reason for learning. We will refer to this hybrid education system as HES. The next step is to have a selection of logical reasons. Every kid is different and they all want different things. So although one project might appear fun for one student, it might not be as fun for another. When we have a large selection of projects, it is more likely that every child will end up doing exactly what he or she wants. In the end, that is what we are striving for. We let the kids do exactly what they want, and the school will help them gain the necessary knowledge to accomplish that project. The flaw with traditional GOE was that it concentrated too much on a particular trade instead of focusing on broader knowledge. When a student attends a trade school, he essentially spends his entire time on a single project that makes him a carpenter, electrician, or whatever. This is where TOE comes into play for us. Instead of spending the whole time on a single large project, we should make the projects smaller in order to expose the students to a wider field and a broader education. We should design the projects so that they cover math, science, English, etc. This way, the kids are not just learning one thing, but are instead receiving a rather traditional curriculum. |
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