In this week’s readings, Chapter 8 of Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works, Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn and Malenoski (2007) suggested using a spreadsheet for each student to self-track their progress and graph the correlation of achievement and effort. This dovetails nicely with Skinner who suggested, “responses should be reinforced with immediate and appropriate feedback” (Lever-Duffy, McDonald, 2008 pg. 19). Through the use of technology, students are able to graph and view immediately the progress they are making. When I was a student 20 years ago, my high school teacher had us keep track of our grades on the first page of our notebook. On our test papers, our teacher had a spot for us to record our predicted grade for the test. If we correctly predicted within 2% (high or low) the teacher gave us a bonus 2%. There was an incentive to keep track of our score and the results led to students working harder than ever to improve their score. This process could have been further improved if the correlation between studying and achievement was visible on a spreadsheet, which could graph our results for us instantaneously.
Chapter 10 of Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn and Malenoski (2007) suggested using different technology and specific web sites found on places like Eddie Awards on www.computedgazette.com/page3.html or eSchoolNews Readers’ Choice Awards found on www.eschoolnews.com/resources/surveys/editorial/rca/ to provide opportunities for children to practice skills through fun interactive websites. The link these sites have to Behaviorist Theory, is the amount of positive and/or negative reinforcement they use. They are also able to provide this reinforcement in an immediate fashion, which I presume helps to facilitate with retention of desired learned behaviors. I myself use a math website from the United Kingdom called www.mymaths.co.uk There are opportunities for students to have online tutorials, which provides appropriate modeling and then the assignments are marked and feedback is given. Students then have the opportunity to go back to improve their score. The ability to achieve a high grade by repeating the assignment over and over is the positive reinforcement some students need to practice their homework.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.
Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Teaching and learning with technology (3rd ed. pp. 2–35). Boston: Pearson.
Orey, M.(Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
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It sounds like your teacher was onto something in regards to keeping track of grades and predictions as far as actual test grades were concerned. I could picture myself studying harder if I knew that I had an incentive to do well and would be rewarded with additional points on my test. I also agree with you that positive reinforcement can gained by practice and perseverance. Depending on the subject and overall student interest, rewards can sometimes gain positive results. Great thoughts this week!
ReplyDeleteJames,
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see you in another class and I hope everything is going well in South Korea. Since you teach overseas in Asia, I was thinking that the views towards a behaviorist approach to teaching are probably different than they are in the states. I am wondering if your school puts a large focus on math than you think that American schools do? Also, if your school encourages you to use more drill and practice activities than you think that schools in the United States might use? I also really enjoyed your idea for having students predict their grade in order to encourage them to track their progress. I could see some problems in my forth grade class, but I think this is a great strategy for older grades to keep them on track and on the same page if their grades start to fall.
Jason