Usefulness Strategies

Usefulness is one of the five broad groups of strategies in the MUSICModel of Motivation.

Overview

“Students tend to be more motivated when they understand how the course content, assignments, and activities are useful to their short-term or long-term goals. Students need to understand the relevance of what they’re learning. Students have short-term goals (e.g., “I want to get at least an A- in my calculus class this semester”) and long-term goals (e.g., “I want to become an architectural engineer”).” (Jones, 2018, p. 75)

Sometimes students are motivated by very short-term goals, such as not getting in trouble during class. For example, eleventh-grade students may behave appropriately in class because they don’t want to go to the principals office or they don’t want to become ineligible to play sports. In these cases, the students want to avoid these punishments, so it’s useful to behave appropriately.

Question for Teacher Reflection

Teachers should consider the following question as they consider which usefulness strategies to implement (Jones, 2009, p. 275):

— Do students understand why what they are learning is useful or relevant to their their goals and/or in the “real-world”?

Strategies

Usefulness strategies can be divided into the four sub-categories shown in this figure and explained below.

Examples

The bulleted examples provided below are just examples, there are many other ways to demonstrate the usefulness of the course content, assignments, and activities. It’s up to the teachers to decide which strategies are most appropriate for their classes. These examples are quoted directly from Jones (2018, p. 77 to 91).

Explain Usefulness

Explain how the content is useful to students’ lives.

Relate the content to students’ everyday lives or issues they face.
Convey to students how the content can benefit them in the future.
Explain the purpose of each assignment in writing.
Explain how particular readings and assignments can help students succeed in the course.
Provide other ways of thinking about how the content is useful.
Be creative (yet truthful) in explaining to students how your course is useful.

Have Others Explain Usefulness

Ask students or someone else to share the reasons they find the course content useful.

Allow students to reflect on the usefulness of the course content.
Ask students to search for some ways in which the course content is useful.
Allow students to hear reasons from one another as to why the course is useful.
Identify careers that require the use of the knowledge and skills in your course and invite individuals in those careers to give a guest presentation in your course.

Design Activities for Usefulness

Design activities that allow students to see firsthand the usefulness of the content.

Give students an assignment that asks them to make connections between the course material and their lives.
For an assignment, ask students to conduct a brief interview with a professional in the field in which they intend to work.
Ask students to complete an assignment related to their goals that requires using the course content.
Require students to create or contribute to a product that connects course content to the real-world.
Share students’ work with an audience.
Allow students to engage in an online virtual world to have almost real-world experiences.
Give students a content test on the first day of class.
Align lab sections of courses with the corresponding course so that material in the course matches with the labs each week.

Have Students Reflect on Their Goals

Provide opportunities for students to set and reflect on their goals.

Ask students to write down their goals. Writing down goals makes the goals more concrete than simply talking about them.
Ask students to think about what they value in life.
Share your goals and how you have accomplished some of them and continue to strive to achieve others.

Motivation Theories

Usefulness strategies are based on many different theories, including (but not limited to) the theories listed here:

Utility value (click here for video) (Eccles et al., 1983)
Future time perspective theory (Lens, 1988; Lewin, 1942; Nuttin & Lens, 1985)
Instrumentality (Husman & Lens, 1999)
Goal setting theories (Locke & Latham, 2002)
Goal orientation theories (click here for video) (Ames, 1992; Elliot, 1999; Maehr & Midgley, 1991; Nicholls, 1984)
Behaviorist theories (click here for video) (Skinner, 1953; Skinner & Epstein, 1982)