Student Motivation, ICT and the future of learning John Collick

Student Motivation, ICT and the future of learning

UNESCO APEID Conference 2009

John Collick

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Student Motivation, ICT and the future of learning John Collick

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify possible links between new discoveries in our

understanding of how the emotional condition of the human brain affects cognition

and memory, and new developments in educational technology. It specifically

focusses on the relationship between stress and learning, and seeks to establish

possible technologies that can be used by students to a) create safe, personalised

learning spaces (or ‘exoselves’) and b) control the pace and direction of learning

within a classroom so that it more accurately reflects their own needs and speed of

learning.

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Student Motivation, ICT and the future of learning John Collick

One of the biggest issues facing educators in the modern world is that of student

motivation. In the past this was seen as solely the responsibility of the student. If a

student lacked motivation it was regarded as a personal failing, caused by laziness

or a general lack of application. The answer to the problem was generally punitive

and those who didn't respond were discarded by the education system. Nowadays

educators take a more responsible view of unmotivated students and a huge range

of theories drawn from cognitive and behavioural psychology have been used to try

and develop strategies to engage students in the learning process. Recent

developments in Neuroscience, specifically research focussing on emotion and

cognition, have begun to identify the mechanism within the human brain that

underpins motivation. The challenge for educators, and particularly those involved in

ICT in education, is to use this new knowledge to inform the design and

implementation of technology so that future pedagogy taps into the huge potential

that computer-based learning has for enhancing students' emotional well-being and

associated desire to learn.

Before we look at the possible links between ICT and the discoveries in

Neuroscience significant for education, let's briefly look at the latest developments in

the study of human thought.

The science of learning and brain research is still in its infancy as a discipline. It

is only recently that developments in analysing the mind through magnetic

resonance imaging, and other technologies, have allowed scientists to observe the

brain at work when processing information. Because this discipline is still very new

(the OECD publication Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science

being one of the first attempts to define the scope and parameters of the field) many

of its conclusions are still extremely tentative. There are, however, a number of

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findings that suggest pointers towards an effective synthesis of ICT tools and our

new-found understanding of how the mind works.

Previously studies of the brain were limited either to research on dead brains,

invasive surgery on animal brains or, on rare occasions, living human brains

undergoing operations to cure injury or ameliorate medical conditions. While a limited

amount of inference could be made about healthy, living human brains from these

procedures, the theories produced were limited or, in some cases, later proved

wrong. For example the common myth that we only use 10% of our brains stems

from the work of Karl Lashley in the 1930s who found that removing portions of rats'

brains didn't appear to affect their ability to negotiate mazes. Later work refuted

Lashley's work, including the assumption that what holds true for rat's brains also

holds true for human brains, but this has not prevented his findings entering popular

culture as the ‘10% rule’, which is still sometimes quoted in educational circles as a

fact.

Over the past few years advances in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI and

fMRI) have permitted neuroscientists to study healthy, living human brains as they

function without any invasive procedures that may compromise the findings. Our

understanding of the structures of the mind, and the functions and processes

associated with each part, has revolutionized our understanding of how we think.

While these are still early days, MRI researchers have begun to gather

evidence which points to some initial key conclusions about how the brain works. In

terms of education, motivation and the development of learning strategies the

following are the most significant:

1) The human brain is characterised by extreme plasticity. Although this is most

notable in the early stages of development this plasticity persists throughout life to a

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huge degree, with neuronal connections being created and destroyed all the time.

The implications of this are that conscious and unconscious learning has to be seen

as a life-long process, and that the mind can be changed or transformed at all

stages.

2) Emotion and emotional intelligence have a massive impact on learning.

Research shows that the Amygdala, the part of the brain that controls emotion and

memory, can shut down higher-thinking processes when it responds to stress. A

student who feels they are under threat or who is unhappy simply does not learn,

because information processing is compromised by their negative emotional

response.

3) Meta-cognition, or ‘mindfulness’ - the awareness and conscious monitoring of

the mind’s responses can, over time, allow the individual to anticipate and intervene

in the response of the Amygdala (thereby preventing stress from disrupting

cognition) and alter the structure of the brain, especially increasing the size and

complexity of the left parietal lobe which is associated with feelings of well-being,

calm and happiness. Learning to learn, and an understanding of how the mind learns

and retains information, is a form of meta-cognition.

For the purposes of this paper, the discoveries concerning the mechanism of

emotion within the brain are the most significant when understood in the context of

student motivation. The key structure which is associated with negative emotion, and

the memory of those feelings, is the Amygdala, which is located in the lower centre

of the brain, close to the brain stem. The Amygdala reacts to stress by sending

messages to the Hypothalamus to initiate the flight or fight response. It is also

involved in creating memories of stressful situations in order to make the body more

ready to respond to similar situations should they arise in the future. This has a

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number of implications for learning. First of all the Amygdala responds far quicker to

stress than cognitive thought (a necessary ability when immediate danger needs to

be avoided), secondly it actually suppresses cognition (which can get in the way of

response to danger) and finally it apparently makes no distinction between high-level

immediate stress and low-level persistent stress.

In the context of learning this suggests the following conclusions:

1. Persistent low level stress has a similar impact on the emotional chemistry of

students' brains as immediate high-level stress. The brain will perceive a page of

hard sums in the same way that it will perceive a threat.

2. Students who feel threatened and stressed build up and retain the memory of

that stress via the Amygdala. If school is associated with unhappiness and fear then

key negative memories are laid down in the brain which inform future responses to

school. School becomes a negative experience associated with negative emotions

and boredom.

3. A stressed student is physically less able to learn. Their Amygdala is in a

constant state of low-level activity which suppresses cognition. The student is not

being willfully stupid or consciously disengaging from the learning process, they

simply cannot help it.

There are a number of strategies that can be marshalled to counter the effect of

a stressed Amygdala. These include the development of emotional awareness

(sometimes called Emotional Intelligence) and meta-cognitive or 'mindfulness'

strategies. Preliminary research suggests that it is possible to override the effect of

the Amygdala by training those parts of the brain associated with happiness and

security (notably the left parietal lobe) via meditation strategies. For the purpose of

this paper we can also ask to what extent can new developments in ICT and

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education be used to promote learning through emotional well-being?

The language of motivation appears regularly in discussions on the role of ICT

in education. The use of computers and multimedia in class is seen as more

motivating as the students’ experience of learning more closely mirrors their

engagement with a rich variety of multi-media outside the school. This is based on

the assumption that motivating someone is the same as entertaining them. However

to a stressed individual entertainment can offer a brief respite from stress (in the

same way that playing Grand Theft Auto might provide a few hours of cathartic

virtual aggression before the player returns to an unhappy and pressured life), but

there are more fundamental points of engagement between the neurological

structures involved in emotion and learning in individual students. Two of these that I

want to focus on are:-

1) The concept of the ‘exo-self’, or personal data cloud.

2) Individual control over the pace and direction of learning.

An ‘exoself’ has been defined as 'Systems linked to the self in a cooperative

way, extending the mind and the body. Especially used about the systems

supporting an uploaded personality, providing information, virtual reality and

monitoring.' (Egan, 1994, Permutation city, p 340). Software that echoes the process

of creating virtual learning spaces or information ‘exoselves’ include virtual reality

modelling software and some game construction software (Second Life, Neverwinter

Nights and the Sims). In addition social networking sites such as Facebook allow for

the creation of internet-based ‘exoselves’. These have the potential to work as

hyper-linked learning spaces providing they fulfil the criteria of providing an

emotionally 'safe' space in which to learn and accumulate knowledge. Within school

itself Personal Data Assistants combined with classroom-based Learner Response

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Systems have perhaps the greatest potential to allow students to create ‘exoselves’

over which they have significant control while simultaneously engaging directly in the

learning process.

User response systems allow students to actively take part in class with

minimum risk. For many students answering or speaking in public is simply too

intimidating an experience, it poses creates precisely the kind of stress that

generates a negative emotional response, which in turn severely compromises the

mind's ability to learn. Students experiencing this on a regular basis disengage or

avoid involvement in any class activities whatsoever. User response systems allow

them to maintain their anonymity so that they can contribute to the lesson or take

part in assessments without the immediate fear of embarrassment if they get the

answer wrong. Anyone who has taught foreign language classes in Asian

universities will immediately recognise a situation where the fear of losing face

reduces the vast majority of the class into silent, hesitant and passive learners. The

danger for any teacher in this situation is to focus on the voluble few and make the

assumption that confidence in speaking equates to ability. User response systems

re-integrate every member of the class so that a more accurate and immediate

knowledge of everyone's understanding can be acquired, either on the fly or stored

to a database for later assessment. The systems can also be used by students and

teachers to change the flow of a lesson as learners give feedback on the fly. A

teacher can poll her or his class to find out if a difficult concept has been understood

and get immediate feedback. In this way, if a class is proceeding too quickly or too

slowly, students can ask for the speed to be changed. Previously this kind of

information was based on a hunch as to whether the smiling and nodding few meant

that all the students 'got it' and not just the able ones, or had to wait until formal or

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informal testing, by which time it was often too late.

So far these benefits seem largely teacher-centred, which potentially opens

learner response systems up to charges that they re-assert the traditional

power-balance between instructor and learner and become little more than

entertaining, transitory gadgets that enhance the position of the educator and turn

the students into passive observers who occasionally push buttons. By incorporating

functionality that would a) allow students to build their own ‘exoselves’ to the extent

that can be found in, for example, the iPhone or iPod Touch, b) enable students to

create meta-cognitive and mindfulness strategies and c) create personal learning

spaces under the control of the student (through self-paced learning algorithms), the

Learner Response System would have the potential to be a significant

transformational intervention in the relationship between emotion and learning.

Emotional intelligence and motivation have a profound impact on learning

(unsurprisingly the words ‘motivation’ and ‘emotion’ have the same root) . When the

brain is under stress higher cognitive functions are compromised. Therefore a

threat-free, supportive environment is essential for learning. At the same time it is

important to create learners who are emotionally literate and who possess the tools

and skills to manage their emotional states. ICT has the potential to support the

learner through facilitating the creation of protected, threat-free ‘exoselves’. Learner

Response Systems and Personal Data Assistants are the most current forms of

technology that could be harnessed to promote emotional self-awareness and

well-being in learning. The challenge is to develop educational strategies that allow

this to happen.

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Bibliography

Understanding the Brain : The Birth of a Learning Science. Paris: OECD, 2007.

Goleman, Daniel. Destructive Emotions. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2004.

Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne, and Uta Frith. The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 2007.

Egan, Greg. Permutation City. New York: HarperPrism, 1994.

Bio
Dr John Collick is a graduate of Sussex University in England, where he wrote his Doctoral thesis on

Shakespeare. He taught English Literature and Philosophy for four years at Hokkaido University of Education

(Hakodate). He then moved to Tokyo and lectured for another six years in the Literature department of Waseda

University in Tokyo, where he designed and implemented the department’s website. In 1998 he returned to the

UK to run the production division of a leading Multimedia company in the New Forest. He now works as a Senior

Education Consultant for Promethean, manufacturer of Interactive classroom technology. John is the author of

Shakespeare, Cinema and Society (Manchester 1988) and numerous articles on literature, philosophy, ICT and

cinema. He also co-wrote and produced Let’s Do Talk (dir. Toshiro Inomata, 1997), a comedy feature film set in

Tokyo.

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