Student Engagement

I was really quite surprised at the approach for this session. The use of social identity theory was something I had never considered as applicable to pedagogy. I have used this theory in my own research, so was already familiar with it.

The application is the use of particularly the techniques of anchoring and self-identification. These are methods that members of groups use to strengthen their feeling of being a member of a particular group. In our case, we want them to be a member of the "students engaged in learning a subject" group, and there are ways we can promote that. I am afraid I cannot remember the details now, though I could certainly construct some methods from my own knowledge of the theory. Specifically, anchoring is the attribution of a group characteristic to one's self, since as a group member means I should have the same characteristics as the group. Attribution is the opposite-- if I have a particular characteristic, then other members of the group should have the same characteristic.

At its root,  the goal is to create intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation (motivation that comes from our own desires) is much stronger than extrinsic (motivation that comes from external rewards and / or punishments). Thus, we should pursue strategies that help create intrinsic motivation, rather than trying to rely on carrots and sticks.

I will have to ask Ann-Sophie for a copy of her slides, though, to review this. I do remember seeing some techniques that I could very definitely use in the classroom.

In the context of my courses, the student motivation has been highest in the specialized courses I have taught on business analysis in the MBAC program. Social identity theory makes it clear why this is the case-- that course is patently  highly germane to the goals of the students (it is part of the name of the program!), and therefore they have a great desire to be a member of the "someone who does business analysis well" group. (I.e., a business consultant.)

On the other hand, the motivation of students in my introduction to information systems classes is quite low. Again, this is easily explained by social identity theory. Most of the students are not interested in information systems, and are planning on specializing in another field. They take this course because they are required to. However, they consider themselves to NOT be members of the group of people who are IS specialists. This will lead to not only a lack of positive motivation, but in fact some negative motivation to do poorly in the class-- to prove that they are not "nerds". Dispelling this will require some serious thought. One thing that I did do this year to try to help with that was to counter it with a different type of intrinsic motivation in one session-- "fun". We did an in-class simulation of a cyber attack. For this particular session, the students were much more engaged. The strategy seems to have worked.

Based on this, I am starting to work on a simulation for the entire course. I'll do it one piece at a time, so it probably won't cover the whole course for a while, but I can at least get some of it going fairly quickly. Using the problem-based learning approach will be a natural fit for a simulation-- the simulation will present them with a problem, provide the needed resources for solving the problem, and allow the students to see more personally the value of the topics.