Unblocked

Motivation isn't the only way to get more work from students.

Thorough test prep takes time and effort. As I said in my last post, “[Students] should be using official practice tests every 3-4 weeks, redoing missed questions, and using high-quality third-party materials. Something like 2-3 hours of homework per week for 4-5 months is usually the minimum for someone who wants to increase their scores by 200 [SAT] points.”

Will students put in the time and effort? I’ve had many discussions with tutors about motivational strategies, and they usually revolve around some kind of emotional force – glory, guilt, duty, fear, joy. The idea is to help the student generate the energy they need to do the necessary work.

But there’s another way to get students to do more work, and it doesn’t require any additional energy.

I first heard about the concept of being “blocked” in software development. Suppose a school district would like to participate in a free trial of Mathchops. I’ve done some work recruiting the district, but now they’re ready to actually set up the accounts. We’ll need to change a little code and add some things to the database. But these are not tasks I’m comfortable doing. And until they’re done, I’m blocked. I can’t show the teachers around their new accounts, or advise them on specific classroom or homework activities, or help them make any necessary adjustments to their rosters. I’m ready to do more work, but I can’t do it.

Luckily, these tasks are quite easy for my partners, and they’re happy to do them quickly. It’s always hard to prioritize tasks, but the task of “unblocking” a partner will nearly always trump any other priority: a small amount of work on their part will unlock a lot of work on mine, which will in turn unblock the teacher, who in turn unblocks the student.

It may seem a bit generous, even delusional, to attribute student inactivity to being “blocked.” But I think most students do have a fair amount of energy for test prep. They’ve seen the work that older siblings and friends have put into the process; they’re excited to go to a “good school”; they know how competitive the college admissions process is; and they’re optimistic that their scores can go up if they practice.

So often, we don’t need to generate more of this energy. We need to unblock it. Here are just a few ways we can do this:

Remove unnecessary friction: If you want a student to go to a certain site, put the link in your email. If you want them to use a PDF, attach it to your email. Make it easy for them to get to work.

Assign relevant tasks: Avoid skills that would never appear on a real test, or that are too easy or hard. Students can tell when the work is going nowhere. It not only wastes their time – it also saps their enthusiasm for future work.

Give them good tools: This is another thing I’ve noticed in my own work at Mathchops. If it takes me 30 minutes to write a single question, I’m probably going to stop for the day. But give me tools that allow me to write questions in 5 minutes and I may have to force myself to stop after an hour. For students, the tools can be products or materials, but the strategies and problem-solving approaches they learn are perhaps even more important tools. Questions that took a long time to solve (or were never solved at all) can now be solved quickly and accurately. And this makes them want to do more work.

Show them exactly how to do the work: Success leads to more work. I’ve noticed that my own kids are much more likely to do a household chore if I show them exactly how to do it – how wet the sponge should be, how much soap to add, what the suds look like when you squeeze, how much pressure to apply when sponging, what to do if there’s something sticky on the table, what it should look like when you’re done. They’ll still have a general aversion to the task, but they won’t have the vague uneasiness that comes with doing a job poorly. “Unpleasant work + success” is just barely (maybe?) palatable. “Unpleasant work + failure” is not.

Students often need to be shown exactly how you want them to do something. It’s not enough to tell them to manage their time on reading. Read at what pace? Take notes…for how long? How should I go back to find information? What do you mean by “thinking of your own answer”? How do I rule out wrong answers? What does this entire process look like and feel like from moment to moment?

If I merely describe these skills, but the student hasn’t successfully executed them in any form, then the student will most likely do whatever he was doing before, making blind attempts to follow my general instructions, all with the vague uneasiness that it will never work. But if I help him accomplish each task in the process, he’ll be much more likely to practice this process carefully on his own.

When a student sees that you understand their motivations and frustrations, that you want to do everything you can to remove obstacles, something interesting happens: they get more motivated. You don’t have to tell them to win one for the Gipper, or shame them with the superior efforts of their peers, or help them visualize walking through the gates of Harvard. They see you working hard on their behalf, and it makes them want to work hard too.