How often have we been frustrated by the eternal student question:  "Will this be on the test?"  Why, we wonder, can't students think beyond the test and find the material as interesting as we do? Our challenge is that students have been trained to be motivated by extrinsic rewards - that is, grades on tests - rather than the intrinsic rewards of understanding and appreciating the subject matter.

Michael Wesch, a Kansas State University professor, popular author, and speaker, calls the kind of learning attitude we want for our students "the state of wonder." According to Wesch, motivation comes when students ask questions or engage in "quests," as he calls them. A quest stems from a strong desire to figure something out, answer a question, or find meaning in what we do. Wesch tells us that we can create motivation for our students by encouraging their need to quest, to make connections, and engage in dialogue by creating a safe learning environment in which they can take risks. In such a learning environment failure becomes an opportunity for learning, and there are multiple avenues to mastery.

Below we offer a number of suggestions for how to create a learning environment that fosters intrinsic motivation:

1. Think of failure as a step to success: Offer ungraded work with feedback; test and retest and encourage students to explore why an answer is wrong; query students to determine where their thinking might be faulty.
2. Offer choice within structure: Offer multiple ways for students to demonstrate mastery, including a choice of paper or project; offer the ability to choose lab partners or in-class group partners; allow students to offer some input on topics to cover in the course.
3. Offer feedback/revision: Give frequent, targeted feedback where possible; use peer feedback.
4. Encourage students to make relationships and connections: Engage in active listening; arrive early to class; use inclusive language; put students in groups.
5. Assign authentic tasks:  Model problem solving about current issues that are important to your discipline. An example might be a project on what teacher education might look like in 20 years - let them grapple with a real issue without a prescribed response or solution.
6. Make learning relevant: Access students' prior knowledge; have them give examples of a concept from their own lives and experiences.
7. Foster curiosity:  Present students with a problem at the beginning of the semester that will be "solved" at the end; ask them what they want to learn about a topic.
8. Promote questions:  Continually ask learners what questions a concept or idea raises in their minds.

The more we focus on the factors that create intrinsic motivation in learners and the more we can adopt strategies to increase it, the less we'll hear, "is this on the test?" and the more we'll hear, "is this a possible answer to the question/quest?"

*Watch a video that Michael Wesch's students and he put together - it has almost 5 million hits on YouTube.