What is one idea from the readings or videos that you disagree with, and why?

Admittedly, like all these three articles argue, motivation plays an essential role in successful learning. Nevertheless, I may kind of disagree by adding that the difficulty of knowledge is among other factors that make learning hard. Under college setting, motivation alone is far from enough in overcoming the difficulties in learning. I suppose that the weight of motivation decreases when school level increases. For example, to students in primary school and junior high school, motivation, especially curiosity, could greatly inspire these students to learn. As a way to motivate, teachers from primary school or junior high school praise frequently those students who excel well in exams. However, this scenario becomes less and less applicable in senior high school and college. For instance, universities announce Dean’s Lists to acknowledge those excellent college students who achieve high GPA in previous semester. However, this move may not overshadow the academic challenges met by students. As a matter of fact, to succeed in college life, students have better to have solid foundation in prerequisite courses. For instance, if I were to achieve well in ODE course, motivation could help very little, but high marks in calculus courses help dramatically. It is worth mentioning here that the end of the third paper mention K-12 model very briefly. It remains doubtful that motivation remains highly important in college setting.

Based on my own experience, there is one primary reason why the importance of motivation decreases somewhat at college setting. First, the knowledge and skills to be learned in college are usually profound. Most of time, even college instructors or professors may not design a good way to both spark motivation and convey knowledge. Meanwhile, in primary school and junior high school, the knowledge taught is usually elementary. Nor does it require prior foundation.

·  Share a story about your best learning experience (could be a formal course or something more personal). Why did you enjoy it? One of my best learning experiences in University of Victoria comes from ECON 225, which was based on essay-writing. Unlike those professors who gives vague instructions, the professor of ECON 225 gave some detailed and complete documents and tutorials on how to write arguments and counter-arguments in an academic essay. Through these documents, students reduced the time and costs in misunderstanding of knowledge, thereby maintaining keen motivation. Moreover, essay-writing requires more or less some talents in English. I was neither good nor bad in English while I was taking ECON 225. The professor understood that such an essay-writing course requires learning by doing, so he was more than happy to hold multiple office hours each week to help me and other students to modify the drafts. I felt consistently the sense of attainment, after my drafts were getting better and better through modification.