Motivating Students

[nlknauss]

I've occasionally come across some mentors and students who ask how they can motivate individuals on their team. This is something that many teachers work to perfect over many years and the same goes for FIRST and other competitions. Now motivating students might not be a problem in our bubble, but it is tough for many teams to reach ALL their individuals.

Mentors, team leaders, student leaders...Check out this article. After reading through it, I felt it would be a great resource for everyone...especially those who really want to make that solid connection.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/edu...-Big-Wait.aspx

I could also pose a question, how do you reach as many kids as possible on your team?

[Cyberphil]

Very interesting article! Now that I think about it, this is so true. Kids in general are beginning to realize that school will last much longer than they think it will. Many of the Kids I have grown up with all of my life are beginning on this long downhill slog, as this author describes it.

Some of these kids, coincidently, are the ones I begged on hand and knee to join our robotics team. I feel that if I had not joined our team I would have fallen down the same, unfortunate path.

But when you think about it, FIRST is the 4 R's this article talks about. It actually embodies each and every one of these R's. This is what the article is talking about. Students are seeing real results and are finally realizing what they can do, and possibly, what their future holds.

Great article by the way!

[timkim]

For 610, team leaders were guaranteed a driver position before but for breakaway, both drivers were rookies.
Why?
- They were the two best performers during the driver team try-out.

[Cyberphil]

But I am confused. What does that have to do with motivating students? I mean, giving them something to have fun with and feel good about is a great thing, but its more than that. Have you read the article?

[davidthefat]

Holy moly, the first paragraph described me exactly...

[ebarker]

from the book "Nurtureshock" -

"Teens need opportunities to take good risks. They need more exposure to other adults, and even kids of other ages—and less exposure to teens exactly their age. They need part of their life to feel real, not just a dress rehearsal for college. They will mature more quickly if these elements are in their life."

The industrial educational complex has so socially stratified kids they do not have sufficient exposure to students or adults of other ages.

Teaching students to avoid all failure has its costs. Academically qualified students commonly have to be taught how to fail creatively and with purpose in order to drive innovation.

If you can engage students in activities, large or small, and get them to understand that what they are doing has a real impact on the world, they will get really motivated.

You may have heard Woodie or Dave talk about how the mentoring process is a 'big' deal. It is not a 'big' deal but a BIG DEAL !!!

There is a LOT of learning and maturing that can go on when you have students working with adult mentors of varying ages and experience.

[davidthefat]

Let me ask you older people, what in the world would I use pre calculus stuff like Graphing and analyzing a polynomial equation in my life? Yes, I am very unmotivated in that class...

[EricH]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Let me ask you older people, what in the world would I use pre calculus stuff like Graphing and analyzing a polynomial equation in my life?

Get hold of an engineering textbook or three in your preferred discipline. If you can't find at least one place that uses stuff that you currently don't know what use it is, or worse, uses something that is based on that, let me know.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by EricH

Get hold of an engineering textbook or three in your preferred discipline. If you can't find at least one place that uses stuff that you currently don't know what use it is, or worse, uses something that is based on that, let me know.

I blame my teacher for not properly teaching me the fundamentals... I know a good teacher when I meet one. My AP Physics teacher is a fantastic teacher, my math teacher is a antithesis. Well I guess she can be a "good" teacher, but that doesn't fit my learning style... In fact I had to correct her on lectures sometimes...

I am more of the "big picture" type of guy, teach me the big picture, I can figure most of the stuff out myself. But try teaching me the nitty gritty stuff like formulas without explaining how they work, it never worked out for me.

Im watching some of the MIT's youtube videos, I love them. They do a great job of teaching me.

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Let me ask you older people, what in the world would I use pre calculus stuff like Graphing and analyzing a polynomial equation in my life? Yes, I am very unmotivated in that class...

(I had this typed up before Eric responded, so I'll post it as well)

Here's a couple pre-calculus things I've been using recently in my controls classes. Some of the applications might be a bit too archaic, but will show that the ideas have a use.

Partial Fraction Expansion. Useful for going from the laplace domain back to the time domain when modeling control systems and their responses. Also useful for evaluating lots of nasty integrals. I've been surprised how often I keep using this basic principle.

Assuming you are talking about factoring polynomials and figuring out if a polynomial has an imaginary solution or not, I regularly factor polynomials for partial fraction expansion, and also to figure out how control systems respond to step inputs. The roots of the denominator and numerator of something like (s + 5) / ((s + 3) (s + 4)) have a very special meaning, and are very important to find. Also, if a polynomial has imaginary roots, the step response of the system will have sin and cos terms.

I'm not sure if you have been introduced to matrices, but those are incredibly powerful. They show up all over the place.

To echo Eric, this stuff is all throughout Engineering text books.

Hopefully my examples have given you a little insight as to how some of the stuff you are learning gets used at a higher level. As cliche as it finds, I haven't found much math that I haven't used again at a higher level in both.

Originally Posted by davidthefat

In fact I had to correct her on lectures sometimes...

That will never change. We routinely catch errors in what the prof is teaching here at Berkeley. It's normally that he made a math error, or flipped a minus sign, or things like that, but that never goes away. Nobody is perfect, and if the prof isn't making errors, he is probably just reading off of notes, which makes for a more boring lecture than normal ones.

[techtiger1]

I love the article, I have felt the same way in my academic carrer at points in time. Motivating high school kids especially is a challenging task but that I think is where the inspiration in FIRST comes in. Everyone sees for example Kobe Bryant go out and score 40pts in a game. No one sees the countless hours, he spends in the gym a week getting ready for that 1hr game. Academics is no diffrent everyone sees the great robots, teams and engineering work pays off for some of the elite engineers (I won't say names but you know who I am referring to) that support FRC teams. Nobody see's the hours they put in spent teaching their students cad, or helping teach a specific engineering math calculation that happens to apply to the robot, and finally the extra hours they spend making sure the drivers are fined tuned ready to go. FIRST is unique in that the students involved in these programs get to experience the work ethic of professionals and the great things that happen, when the right amount of work is put in. This to me challanges and motivates the students more then anything.

Hope this helps,

Drew D.

[IKE]

Great article. Thanks for posting.

DTF:

Math is a fundamental of physics (and a ton of other things too) and physics is a fundamental of engineering.

As a foot-ball analogy, math is the importance of a good weight lifting and physical fitness program. These build strength and endurance which are necessary to complete drills. Drills are then applications of strength, speed and endurance with technique much like physics is the application of math to natural phenomenon. Engineering School is then like scrimmaging/practice and running plays. You use the strength, speed, technique and drilling skills to practice playing the game. The game is then the job you get. Just like in football, you may frequently need to practice (training) in order to get better at the job. One of the great things about the sports model is that you don't have to lift weights for 3 years, and then do drills for 4 years, and then scrimmage for 4 years before you get to play the game. (Hence the genius of FRC and other STEM programs)

To extend my analogy back to the education process. Sometimes people really enjoy running or weight lifting. Asking a weight lifter or a runner (that may have no clue about football) how curls will affect your ability to play the game, and they may not have an answer. This doesn't mean they are a bad lifter or runner. It just means they don't have that experience. The "why" and your motivation are important to the football coach. The lifting/running technique and realistic goals and follow through are important to the physical trainer. Make sense? This point is the magic of FRC. FRC has mentors working with the students much like good coaches work with their players.

*********************************
Specifically to the graphing of polynomials and Pre-Calc:
You may use this subject even more than calculus. Learn it and get good at it. I frequently work with data acquisition. A lot of time based data for vehicle performance follows polynomials. Being able to graph the data, fit polynomials, and then check the coefficients and behaviour relative to physics is very important to sizing of components. (Look up distance and/or velocity versus time profile for the acceleration of a vehicle).

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I blame my teacher for not properly teaching me the fundamentals... I know a good teacher when I meet one. My AP Physics teacher is a fantastic teacher, my math teacher is a antithesis. Well I guess she can be a "good" teacher, but that doesn't fit my learning style... In fact I had to correct her on lectures sometimes...

I am more of the "big picture" type of guy, teach me the big picture, I can figure most of the stuff out myself. But try teaching me the nitty gritty stuff like formulas without explaining how they work, it never worked out for me.

Im watching some of the MIT's youtube videos, I love them. They do a great job of teaching me.

Sounds like you are saying two different things here. 1) You want someone to teach your fundamentals. 2) Don't teach "details". To me these are completely at odds with each other.

Correcting a teacher on a lecture doesn't say anything as to the quality of the teacher. Frankly I prefer it when educators make mistakes, it demonstrates common traps and problems everyone has. Not only does it have a positive moral effect on me when I screw up too but it shows how best to recover or identify mistakes. A brief aside about mistakes. I screw up... no, I screw up a LOT. I take a very iterative approach to nearly every problem (this post has already been rewritten 3 times by this point). From failure I learn; Success... not so much. JVN always preaches that design is an iterative process but I think it goes beyond that, life is an iterative process. Never be afraid to screw up and have to rebuild because otherwise you won't accomplish anything of any value.

Relevance, Real World Feedback, Responsibility, and Respect are good things to preach but how do you actually use them? When I have a student ask me why they are not allowed to use the Mill in our shop what should I tell them? The real reason is that I don't feel they can safely use it*. How do I tell a student that without disrespecting them?

So, great article but it raised more questions than it answered for me. What do I have to change in order to make sure that students aren't becoming disillusioned or worn out? How can I more effectively help students follow their passion?




*The students in this case are rookies and as a rule we have never allowed rookies to use either the mills or the lathes. Not just as a safety concern but also because of the fact that they are large and expensive tools that need to be treated with respect and properly maintained and most rookies have not shown that they understand that yet.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Correcting a teacher on a lecture doesn't say anything as to the quality of the teacher. Frankly I prefer it when educators make mistakes, it demonstrates common traps and problems everyone has. Not only does it have a positive moral effect on me when I screw up too but it shows how best to recover or identify mistakes. A brief aside about mistakes. I screw up... no, I screw up a LOT. I take a very iterative approach to nearly every problem (this post has already been rewritten 3 times by this point). From failure I learn; Success... not so much. JVN always preaches that design is an iterative process but I think it goes beyond that, life is an iterative process. Never be afraid to screw up and have to rebuild because otherwise you won't accomplish anything of any value.

Just to expand on this a little... a coworker was telling me the other day that your average programmer will introduce 1 bug for every 13 lines of code he writes. An excellent programmer can stretch that to 1 bug per 20 lines of code. When I thought on this to a recently completed assignment (~300 lines of code, with ~2500 lines of unit tests and ~30 integration level tests), I realized how right he was. Thus far, no bugs in this area of code have been discovered in our software builds because of all the testing I did before delivering the code... but that testing caused many rounds of iteration and bug fixes - a vital skill best learned early in your programming career.

Screwing up is part of the game. Iterating, testing, and analyzing your failures separates the great from the average.

[nlknauss]

Great discussion and points being made here by both students and post high school people. I really do believe that this article does a great job of explaining really where many of our students are and possibly why they might come to an organization like FIRST. FIRST is a great application of the Rs and also bridges the gap while many students are in the "Big Wait". I would certainly suggest sharing this mentors and other leaders on your team.