Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition

As a broadcast journalism advisor it is extremely challenging to give adequate criticism of student work without giving students a negative emotion towards the learning in the class.  I want my students to be aware of my expectations, but I also want them to still have the confidence to continue to tackle production pieces.  Reinforcement is a cardinal motivator in relation to the behaviorist theory (Smith, 1999).  It is important for students to receive this reinforcement in order to know what is the correct behavior or product to produce.  One way to identify this is through reinforcement. This reinforcement can provide praise but it should be specific and aligned with the expected behaviors (Pitler, Hubbell, & Kuhn, 2012).  Here is what I do in my classroom:

1.       Weekly MVP.  My student leaders (mainly the producer and director) choose an MVP from each class.  I use pictures I took of each of my students at the beginning of the year and we post their picture on a poster with clips glued to it.  There are big letters spelling out MVP on it.  The student also gets to keep a small plastic MVP trophy at his or her work station.  This award is given along with a brief explanation of why the student received the reinforcement.

2.       Online Recognition.  One other way to do this is by showcasing student work via technology (Pitler, Hubbell, & Kuhn, 2012). I post samples of student work on our facebook page for other students and the community to see.   I also post each one of our shows on our schooltube.com page.  Students are recognized in the credits and in the description box.  Feel free to view our show at www.schooltube.com/channel/wavetv

3.       Text Badges.  One other way tp provide students with concrete recognition is to handout badges of achievement (Pitler, Hubbell, & Kuhn, 2012).  I do this via the remind101 text messaging service.  I send out text messages at random times to give a “shout out” to exceptional work.  This system then sends a texts to parents and students subscribed to our text service.  For example:

“Hey Wave TV Crew!  SHOUT OUT to Ashley G. for exceptional use of the rule of thirds!  Check out her PTSA reflections content piece!”

Assigning Homework and Providing Practice

Assigning homework can be a challenge in a broadcast journalism class.  This is because most of the assignments are hands on within the classroom.  According to the behaviorist theory, observable behavior is the key as opposed to the internal thought process (Smith, 1999).  At first, I thought homework was a challenge for a production class like mine until I was introduced to the idea of the flipped classroom.  Basically, instead of using class time to disseminate information from tutorial videos or lectures, multimedia videos can be assigned as homework (Pitler, Hubbell, & Kuhn, 2012).  Moreover, many of the production tasks are usually created outside of class (i.e. filming and interviews).  I realized that the video coach videos I use and the student made podcasts that I show within the classroom could be assigned as homework.  This would allow more classroom discussion and practice with the content.  This behavior modification process allows students more time to practice with the concepts with teacher feedback. 

An example of a video coach students could view for homework is http://www.youtube.com/user/filmriot. 

References

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2^nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Smith, K. (1999). The behaviourist orientation to learning. In The encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/learning-behavourist.htm