[Edu-sig] Learning (some more) programming

[Ian Bicking]

Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
>> Arthur wrote:
>>> One theme that seems to run through discussions here is related to this 
>>> issue. Is it the educators' mission to find just the right motivational 
>>> buttons and push them just right ???  Or rather focus on responding 
>>> appropriately to those who come to the learning process with some 
>>> critical mass level of  motivation???
>>>
>>> It seems to be one of the fault lines, in some of the discussions here.
>> You're right; this is very insightful.

Yes, definitely a useful statement of some of the conflicting goals here 
(even if it often seems like this conflict is being projected onto 
discussions that otherwise aren't taking any stance on the matter).

Anyway, I've been thinking a bit about the motivation part, maybe a 
little like your item 5:

> 5. And as I reflect more on it, here is a fifth options. You could also 
> change the task of jumping the bar into something the kid wants to do from 
> *intrinsic* motivation. This merges somewhat into point #1, except it 
> builds the feedback into the process directly. So, for example, you could 
> put up all sorts of numerical feedback about each jump and plot a kids 
> increasing jump height against on a big graph so they can see their 
> progress jump to jump (with no praise per jump needed, except maybe for 
> effort or progress). (Hard to know how to do this in a programming IDE? 
> Perhaps length of programs? Or how often you go between syntax errors?) 
> Or, for a high tech approach to jump training, perhaps you put up a smoky 
> fog with a laser border shining on it to show a target area to jump though 
> and then laser illuminate the area the kid actually jumps through (perhaps 
> without the bar being there at first), or some such thing. (For 
> programming, this might be some fancy system to give you metrics about 
> programs you write: like on complexity or simplicity or elegance -- which 
> are hard to think of, especially as aesthetic evaluation of programs is 
> perhaps hard to formalize.) So, you are changing the nature of the task 
> into one where there is continuous feedback of some kind the kids 
> intrinsically wants to excel at even if they don't like the original task 
> in its own right.

Intrinsic desire is a little hard.  It certain happens, but often just 
in a few cases; probably many of us had an intrinsic desire to do the 
thing programming allows, but there's many useful things I learned that 
I had no intrinsic desire to learn.  Like writing -- I really hated 
writing as a child, and at that time there was nothing I wanted to do 
with writing.  But I don't think it would have been good if I simply 
hadn't worked on the fundamentals of writing until such time that I 
wanted to actually use writing for something.  And I still don't just 
write for myself; it's a tool I use for other purposes.

Most motivation is based on something external, and I think that's fine. 
  For instance, children often want to learn something to keep up with 
their friends, or because someone they respect (like an older sibling or 
parent) has a skill and they want to imitate that.  To become 
exceptionally skilled at something a child will probably have to 
eventually find intrinsic satisfaction in the skill, but there's lots of 
skills that are valuable without reaching any exceptional level.

Anyway, I've been thinking about a structure for encouraging external 
motivation, while trying to avoid coercion.  It's definitely informed by 
some of the discussions here, as well as other internet phenomena.  I 
wrote up a proposal of sorts here:

   http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peer_teaching_website

I think it could be useful to provide structure to the otherwise 
unstructured activities planned on the laptop.  But there's nothing OLPC 
specific about it, or really anything specific to any particular domain; 
it's not really about teaching programming or anything specific.

At this point I don't really know what I (or OLPC) do with the idea though.

> (*) And if you are not careful, too much extrinsic motivation might create 
> a "praise junkie". See:
>    http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/gj.htm
>    http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Praise
>    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12648314/
> John Holt talks about how, ironically, children in progressive classrooms 
> in affluent school districts (where praise is much given for various 
> reasons) may actually live in fear of not getting praised in class, as 
> much as a previous generation lived in fear of being whipped or spanked in 
> class. Remember, the removal of continual praise is itself a form of 
> punishment (deprivation). The short lesson for avoiding that is to praise 
> in relation to effort or incremental progress ("You tried really hard!" or 
> "You're getting smarter every day!"). From the last link: "Recent 
> psychological study findings are quite straightforward and to the point — 
> kids need praise to guide the development of such characteristics as 
> self-control, self-discipline, frustration tolerance and perseverance. ... 
> The results suggest that kids who are praised for effort and hard work 
> begin to value learning opportunities, whereas children who are praised 
> for their abilities value performance. The studies showed that praising a 
> child for a personal characteristic such as intelligence (“Aren’t you 
> smart. I can count on you for getting an A on your reports!”) can often 
> backfire. The researchers noted that kids given praise that evaluates the 
> child or their traits and abilities (known as person praise) were 
> significantly more likely to display helpless reactions (cognitions, 
> affects, and behaviors) when they were later challenged with more 
> difficult tasks than children who received effort or strategy praise 
> (“Wow, I like the way you looked at this problem from several angles and 
> chose an unusual solution”)."
> Note that what is important here is not a kid getting the right *answer* 
> -- it is a kid getting the right *attitude*.

That's interesting -- I've definitely seen this on certain sharing 
sites, where people leave a ton of comments like "that was really 
great", and "thanks for sharing!"  It's not so bad -- when the social 
structure isn't particularly hierarchical compliments can benefit both 
sides... warm fuzzies and all that.  But it can really go overboard, and 
the inane comments start to explode in number.  I'm hoping that a real 
structure can help avoid this; that there's a place for constructive 
criticism, and a little bit of hierarchy among the members -- without 
some hierarchy there's no authority to make those criticisms, and people 
only offer positive feedback.  Then you get automated rating systems to 
provide the kind of critical and honest feedback that people aren't 
willing to give -- which is a bad compromise, since automated ratings 
are really crude (just a score) and provide lousy feedback.

-- 
Ian Bicking | ianb at colorstudy.com | http://blog.ianbicking.org