This series of six blog posts unpacks each of Gardner’s elements of emotional intelligence and look at ways teachers can use Makers Empire to develop these qualities in students. Other posts focus on ways to help students develop self-awareness, self-reflection, empathy, and social skills. This post focuses on helping students develop motivation.
Motivation is the underlying force that drives us to improve and achieve. Motivation gives us the commitment we need to work towards our goals. People with a strong sense of motivation show a sense of optimism and high levels of resilience. Self-motivated people are also ready to act on opportunities that present themselves. Motivation helps us to stay focused on a long-term goal and to remain productive despite the emotions we might be currently experiencing.
There are two main types of motivation:
An extensive 2021 survey of students, teachers and parents by the Department of Education, NSW, found that, ‘Interest and motivation have a powerful effect on cognitive functioning and academic achievement. They are closely related to student effort, forming a key component of intellectual engagement at school.’
Makers Empire is designed to be intrinsically motivating for students. Students can create elaborate and detailed designs, or accurate models of their inventions. The harder they try, the more satisfied they will feel with their results. Creating cool designs in 3D is something most students want to do, so the motivation to persist and create a great result is inherent in the design activity itself.
There are lots of great ways that students’ design success is celebrated in Makers Empire. The social elements in Makers Empire allow students to receive likes and feedback about designs. Designs are also featured in our gallery and there’s always the opportunity to enter a competition and have your design featured in the Competition Arena. Knowing that your design will be viewed by others and possibly celebrated, is quite motivating.
As students create designs in Makers Empire they receive constant feedback through challenges, comments and being able to follow their improved designs and skills by comparing various iterations of their work. The new feature which allows students to import their own designs to make edits and improvements without losing their original designs is a great way of tracking progress. There’s nothing more motivating than seeing the evidence that your hard work is paying off.
In an ideal world our students will all be intrinsically motivated and complete all tasks for the sheer joy of learning. In the real world, there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of extrinsic motivation and that’s where game-based learning comes in. Students can earn tokens and see their progress and they level-up. Tokens are a much desired in-app currency as they can be used to unlock shapes and acquire cool designs. Teachers can also assign tokens as rewards through the Teacher Dashboard.
Working collaboratively can be extremely motivating. When others are relying on you, it helps keep you working towards your contribution. No one likes letting others down and sharing a great end result or learning outcome can be very satisfying. We’ve seen lots of great examples where teachers use Makers Empire to promote collaborative learning. For example, each member of a group might be assigned with designing a particular piece of playground equipment as part of a whole group model.
Mandi Dimitriadis, DipT. is the award-winning, highly regarded and passionate Director of Learning at Makers Empire. She is an experienced classroom teacher who recognises the power of technology to enhance teaching and improve educational outcomes. Mandi has extensive experience with curriculum development and learning, having previously developed programs for the Australian Government’s Department of Education, and having created custom curriculum for Makers Empire schools in the USA, China and the UAE. She is passionate about Design Thinking and how best to prepare today’s students for the future.
