View Content #26709

By Stephanie Knight, CASLS Assistant Director

For those who were penalized for failed attempts, their success rate was around 52 percent. For those who were not penalized, their success rate was around 68 percent.

Mark Rober’s TEDx Talk opens with this intriguing statistic. He created a simple computer coding challenge in which he penalized only half of the participants for mistakes. He explains that those who weren’t penalized not only had a higher success rate than their peers, but were also willing to attempt the challenge more than twice as many times. These data revealed to him what he dubbed the Super Mario Effect, or the willingness for people to achieve an outcome unencumbered by the missteps along the way. Rober argues that if we frame the learning process on this outcomes-focused orientation, people will be willing to work longer and harder toward their goals.

On the surface, the implications of Rober’s discovery in the field of world language education deal with grading. While it is logical to treat grades as the carrot we use to motivate learners, his research points to the fact that belaboring failures (e.g. lowering a student’s score from 100 for distinct orthographic or agreement errors) will demotivate learners to persevere and continue towards their ultimate goals. Contemporary calls for shifts in grading practices recognize this reality. These shifts include deemphasizing the gradebook value of formative assessments (to allow for the learning process to take place without penalty) and implementing mastery rubrics that provide an overt focus on feedback rather than a letter grade (Heitin, 2015). In concert,  these practices have the potential to foment risk taking in summative and formative contexts.

However, the implications of Rober’s work points to a much more meaningful, albeit slippery, lesson for world language educators. This lesson is related to his call to help frame learning with an outcomes-oriented focus. Developing such a focus in learners is a slippery task because it requires that learners have a keen awareness of learning outcomes and that they find those outcomes to be meaningful. While the former is relatively easy to achieve by posting and communicating learning targets, the latter can seem impossible. Creating a learning environment in which 35+ learners, all distinct individuals of differing motivations, experiences, and needs, find learning to be meaningful is a yeomen’s task. Furthermore, as Sykes and Reinhardt (2012) discuss, it may even be impossible to know if the learners find personal relevance in content without asking them.

Still, there are a variety of approaches educators can take to maximize learners’ validation of learning targets. Wiggins’ (1989, 2011) call for authentic assessment provides one treatment for this reality by contextualizing academic work by the real-world context in which the work is relevant. Another treatment lies in concept-based (Erikson, Lanning, & French, 2017) and project-based (click here for more information) approaches, both of which tie learning content to greater meaning beyond acquisition and memorization. Yet another treatment is to involve learners in the creation and/or personalization of learning targets used in the classroom. For example, learners could determine the contexts that they really want to explore for a given language function, thereby providing a lens through which the teacher can deliver truly focused instruction.

However slippery, world language educators are encouraged to facilitate the building of personal relevance for learners in as many ways as possible. That effort, when combined with contemporary grading practices, has the potential to facilitate a culture of risk taking in the classroom. And, as anyone who remembers the nerves and heart palpitations that likely underscored their first target language conversations would likely note, being willing to take risks in the target language is a critical component of communication.

References

Erikson, H. L., Lanning, L., & French, R. (2017). Concept-based curriculum and instruction for the thinking classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Publishing.

Heitin, L. (2015). Should Formative Assessments Be Graded? Four Experts Offer Their Takes on the Question and Suggest Some Alternatives. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/11/11/should-formative-assessments-be-graded.html

Rober, M. (2018, May 31). The Super Mario Effect-Tricking your brain into learning more. TEDxTalks. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vJRopau0g0

Sykes, J. & Reinhardt, J. (2013). Language at play: Digital games in second and foreign language teaching and learning. New York: Pearson-Prentice Hall.

Wiggins, G. (1989). A True Test: Toward More Authentic and Equitable Assessment. The Phi Delta Kappan, 70 (9), 703-713.

Wiggins, G. (2011). Moving to Modern Assessments. The Phi Delta Kappan, 92 (7), 63.