Revised - Real Life Reporting - Educational Psychology

California College Students lack Motivation

The California college system, and perhaps the rest of The United States, have failed to successfully motivate students to perform to their full potential according to Roxana Marichi, Ph.D., educational psychologist.

“When students get a tangible reward, like good grades or a top spot in a class, it actually makes them less motivated,” says Marachi.

The college system is based on grades and students are rewarded and valued by rank. This is not the way to motivate us to succeed.

Marachi, San Jose State’s assistant professor of the college of education, led a workshop for teachers and staff about how to better motivate students. The session took place at San Jose State in IRC 101 on March 3 at 1:00 p.m.

It was a smaller classroom that seemed to be at full capacity with only 12 of us there. The seating was meeting room styled with everyone in a circle; a setting that encourages equality between teachers and students.

The basis of the meeting focused on healthy learning versus unhealthy learning. Marachi explained that, behaviorism, on of the oldest learning theories, actually has nothing to do with learning.

For students, grades become the prize at the end. Students learn to work solely for a reward. This works for a short period of time, but is detrimental to their work ethic in the long run.

SJSU e-Campus blackboard.com administrator, Mark Adams said that the top performers in their field “spent an enormous amount of time in practice; they also enjoyed practice.”

The best way to learn is to learn for the sake of learning, and not to pass the class.

Engineering professor, Jacob Tsao, Ph.D., brought up a discussion on what student, Justin Riray, likes to call, “the cemetery syndrome,” in which the entire class seems dead. Tsao said that on a regular basis, he would ask the class a question and not a single hand would raise. Marachi reminded us that it is the teachers responsibility to make the subject matter seem interesting and useful to the students.

Marachi explained the expectancy - value theory of motivation; multiply what the learner expects to learn by the value of the material to calculate their motivation level. “This is a multiplicative model, it is not additive,” Marachi said.

“If one of them is zero, then they are all zero.”

It was discussed that if a student believes they will do well, but is not at all interested in the subject, or visa versa, then they will have zero motivation.

Dennis Hungridge, M.A., a human resources workforce planning manager reminded us how the U.S. has built itself on opposite values from the rest of the world.

“The cultural myth of the United States is working hard; not education,” claimed Hungridge.
While Europe and most of Asia founded their worth on knowledge and learning in order to succeed, the United States has founded it’s values on working hard.

Since society has taught this generation to work for short term goals, they have developed short term motivation. People give up to easily. Failing just one class could completely hinder a student’s full potential, because they are likely label themselves a failure from then on.

Marichi advised that students have to learn to love school for the sake of increasing out knowledge and preparing themselves for life using the tools offered to us by teachers. People also need to be optimistic about difficult trials and failures.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

Jordan once observed, “I’ve failed over and over again in my life.”

“That is why I succeed.”

-Justin Riray, SJSU Journalism Major