Intrinsic and Extrinsic...
Which of these motivators, intrinsic and extrinsic, is most effective in a student's success in the classroom?
Jackie, different students have different motivations. In the Career College sector a large percentage of students are very focused and dedicated and are able to self motivate. There is however a population that knows they need education but lack any further focus. They can be easily distracted because it is easier to dream than it is to actually take action and perform. It is this population of students that need external motivation assistance. This also tends to be the population that can take up the majority of our time as instructors. Getting to know your students will better allow you to fully understand which population your students reside. Every student needs your attention, praise, and guidance but some need more external motivators than others.
James Jackson
In a Career College, I would hope the majority of motivation is intrinsic in nature. I hope that the student is motivated internally to be involved in their chosen career field. But due to time, I have found many students need extrinsic motivators to rekindle or refocus them on their end goal: graduation and obtaining employment.
Once we walk in the classroom and take the "first impression." Teachers can identify students who demonstrate high or low motivation in a certain task. When they take general education classes sometimes students can be less motivated because they "think" these classes can be easy and they become unmotivated. In my case in order to motivate these students, I will let them pick their own topic for their profile/final project. Motivated students can engage in the task with intensity and feeling, whereas unmotivated students procrastinate and indicate in other ways that they would rather do something else.
Alex Tavares
Paul, this is a bit of a trick question as both are critical for different reasons. Extrinsic is the most obvious and short term form of reward and can be used to achieve the fastest changes in behavior. Intrinsic motivation is longer lasting and can take the student to that next level of achievement but often times does not take full impact until after the time with the instructor is over. Students that are able to encode for intrinsic values are the ones that come back later and say thanks as they better value the time they shared with their instructor even though they did not totally realize it at the time. As the saying goes, our parents get smarter as we ourselves age. Same for instructors.
James Jackson
