The human condition makes us so quick to focus on the negative that we oftentimes fail to celebrate the positive. Can we find some balance and enhance the affective domain at the same time?
Hopefully, you’ve read about our DAV system to track undesirable behaviors and clearly communicate remedies to students. We’ve found it is also productive to publicly recognize and reward stellar ideas, actions, or performances. The key word is stellar. We should never reward one for doing what is expected; these are reserved for an outstanding statement, a deeply thoughtful question, or a supremely kind act–evidence of higher-than-expected student engagement. Additionally, these rewards are highly potent motivators in any type of competition you might devise.
Purchase a roll of “Admit One” tickets from any office supply store. Keep a few in your pocket any time students are around. I also give a couple to each adjunct faculty member on their arrival for the day. Should a student earn a “blue ticket,” it is worth a single point on any exam other than a final.
Oh, I can hear it now, “Patients don’t give you extra credit!” Our goal is for learning to occur, right? And, we still use a high-stakes exams as the main way to assess that learning. If blue tickets can help a student get an ‘A’ instead of a ‘B’ on their transcript, what does it hurt? They still have to pass final exams and the Capstone. Besides, if tickets are reserved for truly high-value behaviors, the impact to any individual’s overall course grade is negligible. Conversely, elevating an individual’s self-confidence while enhancing group cohesiveness is…yeah, priceless.
Students must keep track of the tickets which puts the accountability on them thus enhancing the affective domain. After the post-exam debrief, students decide whether to attach their tickets or “save” them for the next exam. Of course, since all ticket points go towards the “Exams” portion of the overall grade, it really doesn’t matter which specific exam gets the tickets.
We do allow tickets to be saved for the next course, but we discourage “donating” them to other students–simply writing the recipient’s name on the back stops inter-student transfers. They should be stored securely against the unscrupulous student. Tickets come with handy serial numbers should you choose to track them–I generally just point that out to students with an assurance that I know how many tickets I’ve given out.
Positive reinforcement is rare so students are pleasantly surprised to find such a system exists. It feels good to make others feel good, and everybody wants in on it.