Several teachers I really admire have been extolling the virtues of the behaviour management software Class Dojo, and their enthusiasm for it has me beat. Class Dojo is a classroom management system that helps teachers track student behaviour, both positive and negative. When a student displays positive behaviour, teachers can click on the student’s name and assign them a positive point. If students do something that the teacher wants to discourage, they can click and assign students a negative point. It was nicely described yesterday by @denise_lombardo as the “tech version of names on the board”.
But is it good educational practice?
Why a teacher would want to award points for behaviour is beyond me. Class Dojo is a way of manipulating behaviour and all of the research (nicely summarised by Alfie Kohn) shows that this is counterproductive and destroys the potential for learning.
“The kind of motivation elicited by extrinsic inducements isn’t just less effective than intrinsic motivation; it threatens to erode that intrinsic motivation, that excitement about what one is doing” (Alfie Kohn).
Perhaps we only need to bribe students if the task we are giving them is not really worth learning. Rather than treating students like pets and offering them doggy biscuits (or chocolates or gold stars or Class Dojo points), shouldn’t we examine the tasks and the content of the curriculum, to see how it can be made more engaging?
After asking some questions yesterday and explaining my point of view in 140 characters, I was contacted by Class Dojo today:
Hi Cameron – thanks for the candid feedback – we’d love to chat on Skype sometime about our goals of building intrinsic motivation. Do you have any time to chat this week? We’re in California, but we can work out the times!
We have arranged to Skype tomorrow morning. I must say that their marketing is impressive and I am really looking forward to seeing if they can persuade me that I am wrong!
I agree with everything you have written but I will still use Class Dojo in my Yr8 class (for the moment). Initially I was very resistant to the idea of Class Dojo; I have never been a great ‘giver of merits’ but decided I would try it out as part of a trial to “gamify” my Yr8 class. I too prefer to try to get my students intrinsically motivated but sometimes other means may be necessary to help you get there. The majority of this class will, sadly, probably never study a foreign language after this year (of compulsory language). So, if blatant bribery (with tongue a little in cheek) helps them enjoy their Japanese journey more, I don’t see it as a bad thing. I only use the ‘positive’ points and once accumulated to a certain point, they can begin to exchange their points for Yen and then use them at our “Online shop”. If I get it right, the tasks I set for them to complete in order to receive their points, will provide the catalyst for some intrinsic motivation.
When I first decided to do GBL with year 9 IST, I thought doing badges was enough – even though most people I follow doing GBL talked about XP points. However, students were not levelling up quickly enough to keep motivated in this self-directed unit. so, I introduced Class Dojo – something that changes ever lesson and with every work submitted.
I had my reservations and you’ve said them all above. However, I thought I’d give it a go and see if I can make it work for me. I did not really need it for classroom management – not every lesson, anyway.
I introduced Class Dojo as a way to communicate my expectations. Granted some are on behaviour but several which students have been angling for are not, e.g. Quality work, Good thinking/insight, Creativity, Exceeding Expectations. They try to ‘fish’ for it for themselves or even for others (that’s a good thing). The class also knows that I differentiate accordingly so they all have a chance of earning these XP points. Only a few of them are happy about behaviour-based “on-task” +XP. The higher ability kids want to get the prized XPs..,..even though they’re all worth the same 1 measly point.
As for negatives – they’re all behaviour-based except maybe for “poor work ethic” (which is still behaviour). I hardly use them.
The really good thing about the system for me is that it reminds me to observe every individual. It’s almost like an alert if I haven’t awarded + or – to a student. Then, I purposefully go and check-in with him. So, the system helps me keep track of student progress and opens up opportunities for 1-on-1 feedback.
Kids want to be noticed and being awarded + or – tells them that they have been noticed. It doesn’t work for all the kids but I know at least one kid who has been inspired by the whole approach. He is motivated to do well in my subject at least;is his motivation extrinsic or intrinsic?
Some strategy playing as well. Another kid “saved” all his work to be submitted in one week to maximise his points for the week – he won a badge and a piece of chocolate which he didn’t even want. So what was the motivation for him? Was it extrinsic or intrinsic?
No grades are attached to any of this.
I’m planning to blog about this so I’m glad you’re helping me think this through. I’m just too tired to be coherent, I’m afraid.
From Daniel Pink’s Drive: “Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity. In other words, …[the carrot and stick] may actuallly impair performance of the heuristic, right-brain work on which modern economies depend.” p.30
While the above quote is very dramatic, I do believe it focuses on my concern that by supporting students with extrinsic and badly designed gamification of learning, we are not opening creativity an long term engagement in learning.
If it is planned well, and supports the development of intrinsic motivational behaviours, I love it. If not, is our time not better spent developing reflective learners who understand their own needs and behaviours better?
But then again I am not in the classroom at the moment, so may have lost sight of reality.
Love the discussion on this topic,
Pip
Interesting conversation! I honestly had never looked at Class Dojo til I saw it mentioned in #ozengchat feed last night. I haven’t used it myself, so my comment re: names on board was made from a cursory observation of the site and not from actual classroom use. I don’t know that I would use it myself and would hope I could draw on a range of other approaches to motivate kids…but that said, I have had classes, especially earlier in my career, where I would not have been too proud to have tried anything to turn the tide in my favour.
From that standpoint, if working with a new/beginning teacher who was struggling, I might take a two-pronged approach – help develop the bigger pedagogical picture and approach (or style) over time, but suggest something like Class Dojo as a means of helping the teacher in the short term. (As with Pip, I’m not in the classroom myself at the moment, but do work to support beginning teachers).
And please know, this is not to suggest that anyone who does use Class Dojo is struggling!!! Thanks again Cameron – and Malyn, Pip and Andrew – for stimulating professional dialogue.
I certainly have a reaction against the smug teacher graphic on the classdojo site because it says to me “Look, I’m in control!”.
Yet I too have used it in my Yr 8 French class, mostly to see how the students relate to it, and different ways it can be framed. Gathering field data, I guess.
But the main thing I want to throw into the mix here, is that reality is more complex than “an extrinsic reward kills intrinsic motivation”.
There is indeed what we might call a ‘valley’ where, when you start offering an extrinsic reward, the intrinsic motivation drops. I don’t dispute this dynamic.
However there is a far side to that valley, and it occurs when the individual has a mental model that is able to contextualise the reward mechanism from a higher, savvy, perspective. When they can deconstruct it. I’m saying that there is a sort of literacy to it.
I’m particularly aware of this due to my extreme familiarity with computer games.
You reckon we play monopoly to earn fake cash and beat the other guy? We play monopoly to socialise. The game-dynamic of earning cash is contextualised within what is clearly a constructed, artificial system.
So, we sit above the system, not underneath it. The motivation backfire occurs when the individual has a perspective within the system, mistaking the system for reality. If they look on the system from above, from without, then they can engage with it for their own purposes. This is where the language of gaming is perfect for making sense of this dynamic.
In discussing a study where this effect was shown, Amabile and Hennessy conclude, “It would seem that as a result of their training, these children had learned to treat reward not as an element that detracts from intrinsic interest but as something that can add to overall motivation. They had learned to overcome the deleterious effects of reward – so much that their levels of intrinsic motivation (and therefore levels of creativity) seem to have increased.”
Now, would anyone dispute that our young people are going to be navigating (ARE ALREADY navigating) a world absolutely chock-block full of extrinsic reward systems designed to hack their brains, distort their authentic drives, and make them obey a third party agenda (from work to death for a company through to buy this brand of chocolate)?
The solution is NOT to ban such mechanisms in schools but to contextualise. We need a game-mechanics literacy. Students should be experiencing these systems and taught to deconstruct them, as a scaffolded experience to ‘wise them up’.
In other news, savvy computer gamer kids might be getting just this experience, yet another example of the computer game industry doing a better job of schooling our kids than school does.
But that’s a shame. Being purist about reward-mechanics does nothing to help students deconstruct a world full of them.
I’ve written at length about these issues over at my happysteve blog.
I am not, for one moment, suggesting that teachers are using Classdojo in the way I am describing – simply that the discourse around it could move to a far more constructive space if it transcended its current terms of reference.
The reference for the study I referred to is:
Amabile, T. M., Hennessey, B.A., & Grossman, B.S. (1986) Social influences on creativity: The effects of contracted-for reward.
in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 14-23.
Kaboom, Steve Collis enters the fray! What an amazing professional dialogue. Thank you so much Andrew, Malyn, Pip, Denise and Steve for taking the time to comment.
I have often referred to Years 11 and 12 as a game, and first heard school described this way by Robert Kiyosaki in his book, If You Want to be Rich and Famous, Don’t go to School. Yet, I’m still uncomfortable with the analogy.
Do we accept it as inevitable and teach students to rise above it? Or does school have to be a game at all?
In terms of Class Dojo, it may well be about how it is being used. Any talk of ‘behaviour management’ makes me cringe. Is it to make those unruly Year 7 boys conform or to provide ongoing feedback, and what is the difference?
As Steve puts it, “the reality is more complex”.
My Skype call with Class Dojo has been rescheduled for tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know how it goes.
PS. I am a big fan of Therese Amabile’s work.
Wow! A lot of folks have spent a lot of time justifying some crappy piece of software that will soon be forgotten.
Perhaps, the best defense a teacher can muster for it is:
“I enjoy being mean to children.”
Cameron,
These companies are craven desperate shape-shifters. You criticize them and Voila! They’re now going to “build intrinsic motivation.” See? Corporate folks selling useless products to schools are really our friends?
Their time would be better spent riding unicorns or justifying the NSW exam system.
Cameron – This is what I just posted on Steve Collis’ blog post about this blog post. Oh, I feel so stupid wasting precious minutes on this topic.
Steve,
I’ll simplify matters for you. Baloney!
It amazes me the lengths to which adults will go to justify their overwhelming desire to control young people. At best, this parody of a product is a solution in search of a problem.
Why not ask the moral question of, “Is it right to treat other humans like pets in obedience school?”
While a blog post is clearly an inappropriate arena for debating psychology, you would not need to reward students if there was value in your classroom activity. The need for a reward system speaks volumes more about the quality of the curriculum, the classroom power structure and the psychological well-being of a teacher than it does about the students subjected to it.
If and when extrinsic reward systems work, an increasing dosage is required to achieve the same effect – like a narcotic.
Here’s an experiment for you. Try teaching with tests, quizzes, rewards or punishment for a month. This won’t cost you a cent and will benefit the kids compelled to be in your class.
Best,
Gary
PS: Don’t anyone dare call ClassDojoi and similar dreck educational technology! It is an insult to those of us who have spent decades advocating personal computing for human empowerment, not compliance.
My above comment should read, “try teaching WITHOUT tests, quizzes, rewards or punishment for a month.”
I apologize for the typo!
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Couldn’t agree more with the last comments – what they should be thinking about is how they can make the children want to be in class, and happy in the class – not manipulating them into behaving a certain way.
Relationship, intellectual quality, kids working with their wonder, tinkeriing … Why do we need to be controlling kids ? Haven’t we learnt a few things along the way?
While I am sceptical about Class Dojo, and how successful it would be, I do not see it is any different from token systems, point systems or merit certificate systems that schools already use.
As someone who teaches in a middle years classroom daily, I find it difficult to read others’ comments about behaviour management. It is one thing to preach about how it shouldn’t exist, how students should be intrinsically motivated and how students should be independent; it is a completely different thing to be facing a class of 30 year 7s or 8s who are a week out from holidays or who have spent the whole day indoors because of the rain and be obligated to teach them specific things from the curriculum to students who are not used to being independent.
The theory behind intrinsic motivation is all well and good but the fact is teachers do not have a choice about testing or curriculum. They also have to teach classes where students EXPECT extrinsic rewards and will refuse to participate in any learning until they know its available. I know I have planned hands on, differentiated units, used the tools they love (Minecraft) and the methods they like (talking) and still had students who did not want to participate until their was an external reward.
Personally I combine extrinsic factors that are enforced by my school and try and model intrinsic motivation as the year progresses. It’s hard, and the students don’t always like it (they are not used to being held to those expectations), but they always leave my class at the end of the year slightly less reliant on extrinsic motivators. It is not, however, as simple as some other commenters have made it appear. It is hard, time consuming and not always appreciated.
Rebecca
Steve Collis –
Your response on 31st May 2012 was convincing.
However, I have read the article which you referenced (Amabile, T. M., Hennessey, B.A., & Grossman, B.S., 1986) and found no evidence of the quote you had used. Quite the opposite evidence in fact.
Could you double check the source and specify where in the article Amabile et al. observe that students in the study “learned to overcome the deleterious effects of rewards”?
As with all things, it might not be for everyone. The other thing to remember is that there are children who are at a place, developmentally, where they require extrinsic motivation techniques. Research shows that extrinsic motivation, if used consciously, can help students toward realizing the sense of intrinsic motivation ( Barbara A. Marinak and Linda B. Gambrell, “Intrinsic Motivation and Rewards: What Sustains Young Children’s Engagement with Text?, ” Literacy Research and Instruction 47, 2008, 9-26).
What? You don’t get paid for teaching?
I’m a parent and it’s an awful system. One day in the future people will look back on Class Dojo and the “marble jar” and think we were in the dark ages the same way we look back at teachers who slapped hands with rulers. The only tool it gives teachers is allowing lazy teachers who haven’t learned anything about empathy to manage behavior. Read this and you may change your mind: http://www.teachingace.com/thinking-about-classroom-dojo-why-not-just-tase-your-kids-instead/