Intrinsic Motivation and Transformational Leadership

Intrinsic motivation (satisfaction with the task) seems to work better than extrinsic motivation (carrot and stick).  Studies with college students that provided the students with cash incentives to perform interesting tasks eventually caused the students to lose interest in the activity. A keynote address by Deci and Ryan at the 5th conference on Self Determination Theory discussed the main points of Self Determination Theory.

Basically people are motivated by Autonomy, Mastery, and Relatedness. Working autonomously a person can decide how, when, where, and with whom to perform a task. Autonomy does not necessarily mean independent.  Mastery or competence is learning to perform a task to the best of one’s ability.  Relatedness is the sense of belonging to a group or a connection to something larger than self.

Daniel Pink put the ideas of Deci and Ryan into lay language in his book Drive.  The following presentation summarizes his key ideas.

Transformational leadership seems  to encourage and prepare workers to become intrinsically motivated.   While a transformational leader is charismatic and appeals to followers emotions, they also model desired behaviors.  This type of leader also stimulates their workers intellectually by providing engaging, challenging tasks.  Employee development is one of the main goals of a transformational leader.

In contrast, traditional transactional leadership uses the carrot and the stick, rewards and punishment. This technique can work for simple repetitive tasks but becomes counter productive when tasks become more complex or require innovation and cognitive skills.

Related articles

• Self-determination theory- Intrinsic motivation (psue3f.wordpress.com)
• Intrinsic Motivation & Extrinsic Motivation (scarlettericson.wordpress.com)
• Motivation = Competence + Autonomy + Relatedness (cameronbodell.wordpress.com)
• Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation (m0t1v8me.wordpress.com)

Outstanding commentary on life/work balance by the great Bill Watterson.

 

Life Work Balance

More Camtasia

I continued to work with Camtasia for another class and experimented with some of the features. I continue to be impressed with the capabilities. Once you have the basics down it seems to be pretty easy to use.

This project was to produce a video teaching a skill and it was to be no longer than 2-3 minutes. I rushed a little, sped up the video in spots but I think I got the basics across. I probably could have trimmed the entrance and exit screens down a bit too. Fun Stuff!

Experimenting with Camtasia

This week we experimented with Camtasia Studio 8 by Techsmith. I produced a simple video on Concept Mapping by first building a presentation in Prezi and recording the screen using Camtasia. I used the voice over feature in Prezi for the narration. The audio segments were recorded and edited (slightly) in Audacity.

The audio could be probably be improved by using a quieter space for recording and spending a little more time on editing and filtering. I could just as easily have added the audio during the video edit.

The title screen and the zoom effects on the slides were added during video editing as well as the intro and outro music. I’m working with the trial version but I would be willing to drop the cash for the full version if I can find the slightest reason. It’s just dang fun to use.

Related articles

• Screen captures (realdrlaura.wordpress.com)
• Camtasia (instructionaltechsite.wordpress.com)

Flipping the Classroom

I recently viewed a you tube video that focused on removing lecture from middle school classrooms by using simple one take videos. By recording the lectures the information is available to the students 24×7 and the instructor can focus on individual needs.

Students that have grasped the subject can move on to apply the concepts and students that still are struggling with the concepts can get individual help.

Principles from the Flipped Classroom – chart taken from the video

I really believe this is the future of classroom education. I hope that more teachers will be encouraged to use this technique. It appears to be more effective and more time efficient.

Related articles

• Flipping The Computer Science Classroom (acthompson.net)
• The flipped classroom (deansblog.law.northwestern.edu)
• The Flipped Classroom: Homework in Class and Lecture at Home (jeremiahstanghini.com)
• The Flipped Classroom Boosts Grades 5%. Why That’s As Big As We Can Expect. (techcrunch.com)

Infographics

One of the tasks this week was to build an infographic. This example was built on http://infogr.am/beta/ . The application has limited editing options but can be used to produce simple infographics relatively quickly.

Give a Child the World

The Abilene Paradox

The Abilene Paradox

Sometimes organizations get into trouble by mismanaging agreement rather than from mismanaging conflict. When everyone avoids conflict poor decisions can result. This can happen in interpersonal relationships, agreeing to something that you would rather not do for example.

How many marriages were committed just because the date had been set and the invitations were sent out?

How many bad laws have been passed because legislators voted the party line?

Watch the video, stand up on your hind legs y’all!

Related articles

• Manage Agreement: Don’t let it become a Dysfunction (padmarajeswarinandi.wordpress.com)
• Avoid Absurdity While Facilitating, Keeping in Mind “The Abilene Paradox” (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

 

Prezi

I recently learned how to integrate edited audio into a Prezi presentation.

1. I recorded, enhanced and formatted the audio on Audacity .
2. I saved the files as wave files (or as mp3 both are acceptable).
3. I added an audio clip to each slide in the presentation (as needed) by utilizing the Insert function: Add voice over to slide #.

Once I had added the voice over to the presentation I faced a dilemma. The course site would not accept a prezi link. I needed to record a screencast in order to upload the data to the site. Screenr  from Articulate.com allowed me to record up to 5 minutes of material.

Many of the Screen recording programs only allow you to record audio from a microphone, headset, or camera. One work around is to use a patch-cord between the microphone and speaker jack.

Another alternative for Windows users is to designate ‘stereo mix’ as the recording device and ‘speaker output’ as the default.

Screenr proved to be less than optimal (didn’t work) for this purpose because the free subscription is limited to five minutes per screencast. The capture program on the school site uses Kaltura to record and play student projects with a capacity of two hours per recording. The version of Kaltura application that is used by the school allows a link to the site but does not allow a download of the file.

Screenr on the other hand publishes the recording to the cloud on their site and offers the option of uploading to youtube.com, downloading an mp4 or sharing a link

Below is an excerpt from my presentation recorded on Screenr and uploaded to youtube.

Public Domain and Fair Use

When we write research papers we credit our sources. We not only credit the authors and researchers whose ideas have contributed to our research we credit the artists whose work we use to illustrate concepts.

What constitutes fair use and when is a work (written, graphic, music) in the public domain?

Keith Aoki has provided and excellent overview of the concepts of fair use and creative commons licensing in an accessible graphic novel format. Bound by Law? (Tales from the Public Domain).

Related articles

• Finding Free Content in the Creative Commons (firstdigital.co.nz)
• Ethics & Copyright (grantferrell.wordpress.com)
• What is the Public Domain? (laurelrusswurm.wordpress.com)
• Fair use and Public Domain (zvoreh.wordpress.com)

 

Teaching through Metaphor

Adult learners process new information by relating it to life experience. The more vivid and multifaceted a new experience is the more likely a learner will become engaged and make connections with previous experience.

This works like surface area or the hooks on a hook and loop fastener.

The more connections made to previous experience (even sensory memories) the more likely students will retain and use the information. This is one of the reasons that the technique of chunking works.

Breaking information into manageable chunks gives more opportunity for connections.

Small numbers of discrete information (usually 3-5 points) are more easily processed at a time. I guess you consider it a buffer.

Waffles are all almost all surface area. That is why you can pack them with syrup and butter and berries and … but I digress.

What does this tell us? Teach with waffles. Use metaphors to connect with students accumulated experience. An instructor needs to open up the interior of a subject to students’ inquiry like a waffle iron opens up the interior of the waffle to melted butter and syrup.

If you can find direct application to students personal experience you can help them build connections with the subject. Adult learns bring a broad range of experiences to the classroom. An instructor can ask the students how they could relate the topic to their experience.