Creating Enthusiasm

The magic potion that motivates students to study thoroughly and contribute thoughtfully has not been invented. Unfortunately, there is still a great deal of confusion about the underlying causes for boredom or lack of interest regarding formal learning. Still, finding out how to create enthusiasm about learning remains one of the most important challenges for college teachers.

This week's tips aim to address one piece of the enthusiasm enigma. Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer has noted that mindful -- intellectually alert -- learners are more enthusiastic as well as more successful than mindless -- relying on intellectual auto-pilot -- learners. She explains how social conditions can affect how mindful a student will be. This week's tips offer suggestions to encourage mindfulness in your students.

Make It Meaningful

People become more mindful when they believe something meaningful is happening. Since it is impossible to anticipate what different students will find important, create ways to encourage them to look for connections to the course material.

Check Connections. Introduce a topic by challenging students to think of how it might connect to past, present, or future experiences. Students can share orally at the end of class or write a short response.

Find Significance. Ask your students to identify something in the reading material or lecture that has personal significance for them.

Examples. After illustrating a concept with your examples, pause and ask students to provide examples from their experience.

Application. Give students an index card at the beginning of class and ask them to write down one or more potential applications of today's lesson by the end.

Conditional Conditions

When people are not comfortably certain with what will happen next, they become more alert. By contrast, when a teacher simplifies information, students feel they can adopt a mindless attitude, trusting they won't be surprised.

Should/Could. Langer found that substituting conditional verbs -- should or could -- in a description encouraged students to learn better. Find appropriate ways to tell your students that ideas "might be" right . . . but need some thoughtful inspection.

Imagine Alternatives. Ask students to imagine language without grammar. Ask them to invent another language. By upsetting the taken-for-granted, you can make students more alert. Find an example suited to your lesson and give student a few minutes to consider a contrast to the expected.

Teach Mistakes. Students stop thinking once they believe they have the right answer. Encourage hypothesis testing as a way to make thoughtful mistakes . . . ones you learn from. Ask the CIRT for a copy of the "Oops Experience" for a discussion on how and why to give students mistakes to learn from.

Multiple Viewpoints. When reading a text, ask you students to consider the material from multiple points of view, not just the author's. Ask them to consider how the same event or description would change.

Searching for Patterns

The search for distinctions and patterns is what makes our observations interesting. Boredom comes from a rote acceptance of information and failure to search for underlying patterns. Challenge students to actively look for distinctions in what is happening with the following tips.

Logs. Ask student to keep study logs. Set aside time in one class to analyze their personal patterns for studying. Discuss the patterns that they find.

Process Analysis. Ask students to note the steps they follow in completing an assignment. Have them examine the patterns they follow in analyzing a story or working out a problem. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their approach.

Inductive Time. Inductive teaching provides examples and asks students to construct the underlying principles. Through presenting the right examples in a questioning way, students will usually cover the same material as a lecture. Ask the CIRT for a sample.

Final Comments

Creating conditions that generate mindfulness is one way to keep the doldrums in the middle of the semester from turning your students into inert learners. There are other factors that affect individual motivation. Students struggling with such problems may not gain much from the ways you make your class more meaningful. But, for many students, teachers who create mindful conditions provide opportunities to slough off lazy mindlessness and engage the course ideas thoughtfully. There are lots of good suggestions in Ellen Langer's The Power of Mindful Learning. Ask the Center for a copy of a good sample chapter. Consider: what would a class of mindful students look like?

This Teaching Tip was first published by Indiana State University’s, Center for Teaching and Learning on February 22, 1999.