Changing the Stakes

Reflecting on our conversation yesterday about low-stakes assignments, I perceived an implicit equation, in which an ungraded or credit-only assignment = a low-stakes assignment. When I asked how, without a grade, we can tap into students’ other motivations to do an assignment, I didn’t really question that implicit equation. But our earlier conversation about our comfort or discomfort with writing and sharing our poetry could be considered a conversation about stakes—in this case, the high stakes of being vulnerable, whether that be the vulnerability of writing in a genre with which we have limited experience or even negative experiences, of writing in a language that is not our first language, or just of writing about ourselves, especially about our younger, even more vulnerable selves. In other words, grades aren’t the only stakes.

Later, Yolande joined me in a breakout room to talk about public writing, and looking at the questions Here’s what I want you to do, Here’s why I want you to do it, and Here’s how to do it, she added the question, Who cares? Her question offers a wonderfully succinct and direct way to get at the question of motivation. When she put the question in this way, I saw how public writing specifically and open pedagogy more generally really change the stakes—and thus, possibly, the reasons students may be motivated (or not). Typically, the audience for a writing assignment is the professor—the sole person to read, give feedback, and/or grade the piece of writing. With public writing—however that “public” is defined, whether it be the public arena of the classroom, the BMCC community, the readership of a particular publication, or etcetera—the audience is bigger, and so the stakes may be higher, or at least certainly different than when the student is writing just for the professor.

Seeing this connection between stakes, motivation, and audience raises other questions. For example, I wonder what those who teach public speaking might think, given that in your classes (I assume), students aren’t just speaking to the professor. Also, I wonder what other factors influence the stakes for students. We’ve talked about perceptions of relevance. (That one struck a chord with me; my kids are constantly dismissing this or that as irrelevant, including, recently, Oedipus Rex, whom I was told is just some rando Greek guy, totally irrelevant.) I also have glimmers of an idea of how one’s self-image or identity could be at stake in a course or assignment. What else? And how else might the openness of open pedagogy influence or change the stakes?