Engagement

As someone who always hated school (well, at least until I started working on a Ph.D.) I have been interested in finding ways to make classroom instruction more engaging. Thinking that hobbyists are the perfect example of life-long learners, I did some surveys to see if there are particular things that make all hobbies enjoyable. These surveys, of adult hobbyists and high school students, suggest that people like to create things that they can use to express themselves and be able to share with others. Since these features are part of Problem-based learning and cooperative learning (among others), this seemed like a viable way to improve instruction. My dissertation study tested three classroom activities with varying opportunities to create, customize, and share. I always hated school. "Then why are you a professor of education?" people respond. Unlike most people who become teachers because they liked school, at least mostly, I became a teacher because I wanted to change things. Of course I liked school once I started my doctoral program, but the things that made my doctoral program enjoyable are not replicable in a K-12 setting.

When I was trying to figure out just what my dissertation study would be my heros were D. R. Godden and A. D. Baddeley who did a classic study on context dependent memory. A perfect study, a 2x2, people memorize something above or below water and then try to recall is above or below water. Not only did the study demonstrate the effect and get included in virtually every Cognitive Psychology textbook. These guys got to write a paper about going scuba diving. Now that is smart.

Now, my hobby is brewing beer, which is not an easy sell in the context of K-12 education, but I wasn't easily dissuaded. Hobbyists, I argued, are the ideal "life long learners." Wouldn't it be great if there were a way to make students as excited about their least favorite subjects as beer making had made me interested in microbiology? (People don't make beer. Yeast make beer.) I drank a homebrew to ponder. One possibility is that the self-selection of hobbies is what makes them fun, that the satisfactions present in brewing beer are completely different from those derived, say from building model rockets. If that were the case, this wouldn't be a very useful means of informing the design of instruction, since we don't have the luxury of having people choose what to study, or, more importantly, what not to study. (A brilliant luxury present in grad school.)

So I sent some emails out to hobby-related email lists and asked people to do an online survey about what things contributed to the enjoyment of their hobbies. Turns out that across even different hobbies people ranked things fairly similarly. There were a few exceptions like the motorcycle racers who really enjoy competition more than, say, beer brewers (though I've placed in several competitions).

Three things near the top of the list showed promise for improving education: creating a product, personalizing, and sharing.

The next step was to see whether these satisfactions could be utilized in the classroom, but I'll have to write more about that another day.