“Efficiency demands that we work smarter and not harder, but is this better for our wellbeing?” That’s the question that Campbell et al. (2025) investigate in their study, and they give away the answer pretty much directly: no, since the article is called “experimental evidence that exerting effort increases meaning“.
Last week, I had a great day listening first to the trial lecture and then the defense of Gerald Decelles III’s PhD thesis, and it was so inspiring! Both his trial lecture and defense were such excellent presentations that I have to compile my notes into a blog post to process my thoughts. In the […]
Teaching in Higher Ed with host Bonni Stachowiak is really one of my top 3 all time favorite podcasts. Today, I listened to her talking with Simon Cullen and Danny Oppenheimer in an episode on “rethinking student attendance policies for deeper engagement and learning“, and they talk about it in a way that really resonated […]
This is quite an intriguing article! Feeling more related (more belonging?) might make us feel less autonomous (except with people we are super close with)? If, motivated by self-determination theory, we try to give students opportunities to experience both autonomy and relatedness, and for feelings of relatedness/belonging, we force/encourage students to work with people they […]
Student attendance has been a hot topic for a while now. In this study, an impressive 101 interviews with students from one first-year course on what teacher behaviours influence their attendance are analysed. They find that structured guidance, promoting active participation, acknowledging students’ feelings, and teaching performance are the most important categories.
I read this paper on the bus this morning, but in a nutshell: it investigates PhD students’ research self-efficacy (i.e. the confidence in ones own ability to do research) and help-seeking behaviour, both of which are important to develop during PhD studies.
I’ve been vaguely interested in the persistence of emotions ever since Marlis’ presentation about eco-emotions since at least mine can fluctuate enormously (which makes it very hard to fill in any surveys that is asking about emotions because I never know whether they want to know how I feel right this second, or on average […]
When Rachel sends me something, I read ;-) If students, in their second week at university, say that they “can’t be arsed” to do an in-class exercise — will they persist at university, and succeed? Or does success depend on other factors than their motivation? And how should we, as teachers, react?
“Motivation is left, right and centre in learning. Self Determination Theory’s (SDT) is one of the main theories of motivation, and its two founders, Ryan and Deci, are number 6 and 16, respectively, on the list of the most cited researchers in the world. (They have a staggering 1 148 467 citations between them as […]
I love using self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) as a framework against which I check all teaching I develop. Is it even possible for students to feel competence, autonomy, relatedness in the environment I am building, or what can I tweak to create conditions in which these contritions for feeling intrinsically motivated are more […]
