Motivating Students: The Excitement Hypothesis
According to an ACT Policy
Report[1],
though American students have "greater access to technology" there is still "no strong evidence that overall student achievement has increased as a result." A reason for this lack of demonstrated increases in student achievement through the use of technology tools may be "that access to technology is only half of the mission that must be accomplished."[2]
According to Richard J. Noeth, an author of this report,
having computers is only half the picture. The computers must be used in a way to further student
education. "Too often we see teachers using computers only for basic, isolated tasks such as math calculations and word processing. Instead, computer technology should be integrated into the teaching process to help motivate students and enhance learning (Noeth, 2004)."
[3]
If student motivation is increased through excitement when
coupled with the presentation and interactivity of efficacious academic
content, then we expect to see increased learning over time. We call this the Excitement
Hypothesis. This hypothesis is shown in Figure 1.
In the Excitement Hypothesis we expect to see an initial high
level of excitement by both the teacher and student from the introduction of
our TUI-based interactive textbooks.
As the teacher is able to track student participation with the textbook we expect to see the teacher's excitement increase while the student's excitement decrease. Over time as the teacher is able to interface with colleagues, parents, and administrators regarding a student's participation, and as the student begins to realize confidence from learning through the use of the book, we expect that the teacher's excitement level will continue to grow and the student's excitement level will turn around and increase in excitement.
Conclusions
·
According to Noeth, and we agree, that "students learn more quickly and with greater retention when learning with the aid of computers, and their attitudes toward school and learning are positively affected by computer use."[4] We further posit that:
o
Our
TUI-powered interactive textbooks will increase student learning through
increased motivation and quality content.
o
That
our textbooks will bring a new level of interactivity. Dreaming about what is behind a picture
(TUI) can be made a reality by pressing the TUI and getting the content. The child that looks at a picture and
dreams can now look a picture, press it, get the content, and know the reality
behind the picture.
·
We
expect our Excitement Hypothesis to be held true.
Figure 1: The Excitement Hypothesis