response to bryon

the deleted comments just had some typos... you can't edit comments, so they're not too useful if you're writing something longer, and you might care about editing them for clarity or accuracy.

Re: handing a survey out in classes, perhaps a few folks could try out asking some profs they know how they would feel about it. Having your class' perceptions and motivations assessed is part of how our work is evaluated here so you may find that to be a sensitive subject.

That can all depend on how you frame the goals of the project. Is it to make judgments about who is a good teacher, or who has the "best" teaching style, or is it for all of us to work as a team with faculty, students, administrators, and anyone else interested towards making this campus a more motivating place to learn? (Even so, you might find some profs skeptical or antsy about participating, until they know better what we're up to and whether the can "really" trust us to be on everyone's side).

Keep that in mind when thinking about potential areas for hypotheses too...

I think Bryon's idea of using a survey as a breeding ground for hypotheses is a good idea, although our hypotheses and preconceptions will shape what kind of questions we put on the survey, thus limiting the kind of hypotheses we might get out of it. It might be useful to combine surveys with open ended interviews. You could use the survey to get people thinking about the subject, and then when they're done, if they are willing, start them talking to get some additional perceptions which the survey might not tap into.

I think it would be really useful for all of us who care about this process to spend some serious time reflecting on our ideas about student motivation, and spend some concerted effort writing those ideas, hypotheses, assumptions down. Then we could spend some time together, maybe this Friday, putting those ideas together, to get the broadest span. Then we could identify embedded assumptions in our views and question those in order to include more potential ideas that might be "blind spots."

You folks talk about this stuff with me all the time, we talk about it in learning and cog, too, so I know you have really useful ideas and insights. Reflecting on them thoroughly enough to write coherently about it should help focus our hypotheses, questions, and potential areas of focus.