Zak's Weekly Musings (March 20, 2022)

Back in February, when students were setting Q.3 goals, I was chatting with an advisor about how things were going. He shared that his advisees had shown a bit of initial reluctance to engage in the goal-setting process. When he inquired a bit further to better understand where this reluctance was coming from, his advisees shared that they felt goal-setting was an exercise in futility – they’re asked to set goals, but they never revisit them in their classes. Eventually, they forget about their goals until about 8 weeks later they’re asked to reflect on their progress towards it. 

Goal-setting is closely correlated with student academic achievement, but it is also intimately intertwined with the growth of those proverbial “soft skills” such as resilience, self-efficacy, motivation, and equanimity in the face of setbacks. When we think about the criteria that define our Portrait of a Graduate, goal-setting is one of those instructional strategies that can help bring them to life. But, it’s not going to bring anything to life if we take the crockpot approach – set it and forget it – or, we relegate the work of goal-setting to advisory alone. 

This is where Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) comes into play. You see, AGT holds that student engagement is a byproduct of that point of confluence where task- and ego-related goals meet. A task-related goal can be thought of as your daily learning target; an ego-related goal can be thought of as a student’s overarching, transdisciplinary quarterly goal. If we want students to be engaged in our classes, we need task- and ego-related goals to co-exist. 

Think about a PE class: if I, as a student, self-identify as a basketball player, but I have to do a volleyball unit for the next two months, well what the heck is keeping me engaged? How does volleyball intersect with my ego-related goal of becoming a better basketball player? Well, the answer lies in hand-eye coordination, footwork, spatial reasoning, teamwork, etc. There are many ways that a volleyball unit can help me to become a better basketball player, but do I, as a student, know this? Do I, as a student, have the opportunity to actually make sense of how this volleyball unit is relevant to me? 

Think about how student engagement would increase if students were given the explicit opportunity to connect their goals with your daily learning target. Think about how much more relevant learning would become in the minds of our students if they could understand not just what they’re learning today, but why today’s learning is relevant to them. 

For a couple of resources pertaining to relevancy and student engagement, check out the Resources Archive.