Motivation Checker

The free Motivations Checker app for iOS was created at the request of my father. He has been gaining experience in class music making for many years and over time came up with many ideas to make the social components more prominent in the classroom.

Get feedback from the students

Important points include involving everyone, giving students choices, being creative together, or - and this is where the app comes in - creating space for feedback and strengthening the group's perception. Because there is often a great deal of shyness about voicing one's opinion, the Motivation Checker is an anonymous alternative that you can use specifically as a teacher.

Find the right question

To do this, consider a valuable question such as "How motivated are you today?", "How well did you understand the assignment?", "How do you feel about the upcoming exam?", or "How prepared are we for our performance?". Things you want students to consider, such as the size of an exam, the preparation time invested, or the difficulty of the works to be performed, you explain orally if necessary.

Try it out

Then the iPhone or iPad is passed around, or the students line up and tap a smiley one by one. An "average smiley" is calculated for the results page, which you can present to the class. The conclusions can be many and varied:

The joy of a motivated class gives self-confidence and increases one's own enjoyment of the work. The knowledge of an unmotivated class can be examined more closely. Is it due to the way the class is taught, the form of the day, or perhaps something has happened that doesn't relate to your own teaching at all? Over- or under-demanding students thus come to light more quickly.

In addition, of course, each student sees for himself how he feels compared to the class. If he is far off the mark, he will at best question his attitude and give himself a break. In this context, the smiley hustle and bustle that you see just before the results page also becomes exciting. Sometimes there are only one or 2 very demotivated smileys. But those are enough to greatly lower the average motivation. If you explain that, the students understand better that each individual is important.

I hope the app helps you and I'm looking forward to your feedback. Be sure to let me know how you use it!

Acknowledgement

Thanks to my father (Burkhard Mikolai) for the idea and to my better half (Lina Mikolai) for designing the smileys!