Motivating students: the impossible dream?

Nov 16th, 2011

Posted by Christine

Is there a fictitious monster, locked away in some bestiary or fantasy novel, that gets larger the longer you look at it? If not, there should be one, if for no other reason than to allow me to liken this topic to it. What began as a harmless little post highlighting some of the features designed to encourage the students to keep playing has turned into a personal quest to understand why students don't do what we assign, even when we try our very best to make the assignments enjoyable. And believe me, creating Tonic Tutor has been an extraordinary attempt in that direction.

Sadly, I can't say that all my soul-searching has turned up anything that will be news to experienced teachers. We all know what students are like. But I will share a few of the thoughts that I have about motivation in general, which might help students and parents to understand the role that Tonic Tutor plays.

When learning something new, it's necessary to have a healthy blend of enthusiasm and self-discipline, but both of these ingredients are problematic: self-discipline is difficult to attain, and enthusiasm is easy to lose. During those times when we don't have enthusiasm to fuel our learning engines, we rely on boring old self-discipline to plod along, carrying us through the doldrums until the next spark of inspiration brings that wonderful enthusiasm back. All of my students are enthusiastic at least some of the time, but left to their own devices, they all lack a sufficient amount of self-discipline. This is not surprising – they’re young, and self-discipline takes years and years to develop. Teachers can help guide students down the right path, but it is the parents who possess the greatest power in determining whether self-discipline is ever achieved, and to what degree.

So if the parents create the environment that fosters the development of self-discipline, it’s really important that they know the value of the habits that they are trying to instill in their children - in this case, the value of online games that develop skills in ear training and theory. It's easy to understand why parents might miss the point: after all, we usually play games for fun, during our leisure time, when we feel like it. But seriously, how many students are going to work on ear training and theory in their leisure time? The games may be amusing at first, but parents must understand that students need to make the games part of their routine in the long term. Long term means we need to bring in the self-discipline skills.

Back to the practical end of things: here’s an example of the kind of email that I might send out to the parent of a new student to introduce the site:

Dear Mrs. Smith,

I hope Johnny enjoyed his first piano lesson! As well as his weekly lessons with me, Johnny also now has access to a website with music games called Tonic Tutor (www.tonictutor.com). Here’s how it works: he plays the games at home each week, and I can see his scores and make adjustments or add more games as appropriate. These games are part of Johnny’s required weekly lesson preparation. Please give it a try with him and let me know how it goes. The login information is below...

I certainly don’t want to place all the responsibility of Tonic Tutor’s success on the shoulders of the parents – but let’s face it: their responsibility in ensuring that their children develop self-discipline can be neither overstated nor ignored.

With Tonic Tutor, Will and I help as much as we can to foster the enthusiasm side of the equation. We’ve also created a number of features (some in response to teachers’ requests) that were designed specifically for the purpose of motivating students during times when enthusiasm might not otherwise be overflowing:

1) Stickers. Almost every week I get messages from students (or parents) to remind me to send stickers. I think this is a good thing (and I’m amazed that after all this time I’m still forgetting to send them unless prompted). We recently spent a month purchasing thousands of new stickers, and although it’s going to take a while for all of them to show up on the site, some of them are already there and we’re hoping that they’ll appeal to a wide variety of students. Since Will tended to find ones with aliens and spaceships and robots, I tried to counter with the rainbows and flowers and cupcakes.

2) Contests. I’m not really a competitive person, but many of my students are. Last year I held a number of contests. The first contest was held before the contest feature was available on the site – I just kept track of people’s scores. Despite my efforts, a number of my students hadn’t really started using the site regularly at that point, so participation was not stellar. But I gave out prizes to two winners at the December recital, and I think that got people’s attention – participation in all contests since then has been almost 100%.

3) Goals. For students who are put off by competition, goals may be a better option. They're easy to assign and satisfying to achieve.

4) Report cards. Students (and parents) are sometimes curious about what kinds of scores are being achieved - report cards are useful indicators. I use them with caution though, making sure to indicate a clear reporting period after several weeks in which the student is able to practice the games exactly as they will be in the reporting period. I think this is only fair - that way, they will be tested on what they have learned, not on what they are still learning.

Here are a couple of other things that I have learned to keep in mind – not everyone is going to agree with these points, but they work for me:

1) I keep the lessons relatively small, and I change them every month. As I mentioned back in September, I’m using the topic presets: I started with individual pitches; last month was intervals; now we’re into scales. These topic settings don’t exist for the method presets, but I find them pretty useful for my RCM students. My hope is that the feeling of progressing from one topic to another will make things a little more interesting.

2) I make sure that the lessons I assign aren’t too difficult. Some students get discouraged quickly. I also make sure to tell them that Tonic Tutor is a website for learning, and when we’re learning it’s okay if we don’t get all the right answers every time. Do remember that when you are assigning a lesson to a student, you can adjust each game’s settings – many of the games cover a lot of ground. Please don’t trust my presets without taking a look at them first – I don’t know your students! Once you’ve got the settings the way you want them, try them out by clicking the black bar at the bottom of the screen that says “Click here to try these settings”. (On my computer, after I click that bar, I’m left back at the top of the screen and I have to scroll all the way through the game settings again before I find the game waiting for me at the bottom of the page.)

On a positive note, I can say that having used the site for a couple of years now (obviously I was using it with my students before we went "live" back in August 2010), the road to effective and consistent use of Tonic Tutor may not be a short one for all students, but with some persistence it does happen eventually for almost all of them. And in my opinion, it's a trip well worth taking.

Does anyone else have any suggestions? I know that some teachers are very successful in getting their students playing consistently – it would be great if you could share the secrets of your success with the Tonic Tutor community!