How many times have you told your child to go and play a video game? I suspect never — the issue is more than likely the opposite — you can’t get them to stop to playing video games. If these games are so engaging and motivating perhaps it makes sense to explore the reasons why this is so and extract what lessons we can from them. Think about how your child gets involved in these games… they can play for hours postponing food, drink, bathroom breaks, accomplishing difficult tasks despite failures and setbacks in their single-minded quest. Imagine if this same focus and perseverance was applied to other tasks such as school work and music lessons. I believe there are lessons we can learn from video game playing to understand how to engage drive and motivation.
Daniel Pink in his book, “Drive” outlines that for tasks to be motivating and drive us forward they need to have three key factors:
Autonomy: |
|
Mastery: |
|
Purpose: |
|
Bottom Line: |
|
When I talk with gamers about the appeal of gaming, they tell me what keeps them going level after level is something like this…” everything I do in the game lets me know immediately if something I did works or not. I either fail or succeed.” There is immediate feedback and immediate cognitive rewards. The appeal of video games is clear to see. Every game includes the ingredients for motivation…. Attractive, Realistic amount of energy and chances of Success are good. In video games, as the players work through the levels and the gameplay, they begin to understand the essence of the game and what works and what doesn’t. Every misstep teaches them what not to do again. They are always clear on their endgame, on what constitutes achievement and they are allowed to develop their own strategies to reach it. Mastery is clearly established in the feedback loop which is immediate and definite. Transferring the motivational theories found in video games to an academic setting is a challenge but nevertheless possible.
Human motivation is a complex subject, but what may be derailing many of our students could be quite simple: the lack of clear short-term goals with purposeful objectives and the absence of immediate feedback and reinforcement. All human behavior is motivated. Even the child who appears to be unmotivated is actually motivated. A student’s refusal to do homework may actually be motivated by fear of failure, fear of embarrassment or perfectionism. Homework should have components of choice — when, where and with whom. The feedback loop has to be closely tied to the work’s completion so adjustment and corrections can be made in order for lessons to be learned.
If attractiveness, effort, and ability to accomplish the goal are present, the student will likely be motivated.
Here are a few suggestions:
Autonomy +Attractiveness |
|
Mastery + Effort |
|
Purpose + Goal |
|
To support your student in using the attractive features of video games to complete their homework between now and the end of the school year, problem solve ways they can make their homework appealing — have a study buddy, work in a new location, time the work, begin with some exercise, do the work for a defined period of time and then relax. Clarify that they understand what to do, what is expected and that they have the materials to do the work. Discuss with them times in their past, perhaps in sports, when they have worked hard and achieved that sweet feeling of success.
Try playing with word equations such as:
Completing homework + _________________= good report card.
What missing ingredient can they add?