Good question, but no, I wouldn’t say these students are trying to guess the password. The cards they’re remembering aren’t complex enough to qualify. The answer is the answer, not a surface representation of some deeper knowledge they’re skipping.
This feels more like a case of selective attention, of perking up and caring more about cards they see as “in their wheelhouse”. It’s an easy way of being better than everyone else at something, even if that something is pretty narrow. If you’ve ever done any cooperative social gaming, you can probably recall analogous situations where new players spontaneously start seeing themselves as specialists with some power-up, weapon, player class, etc. It’s a land grab for the ego, and mostly just harmless fun.
Remembering passwords takes effort; a mystical incantation is harder to memorize than an answer you can logically derive from deeper knowledge. Hence, password guessing is something I mostly see in students who are grade obsessed, and I don’t get too many of those.
What I am suggesting is that in “knowing one card”, they have thoroughly decided to commit to knowing the password in this one field. They are essentially checking out from doing anything other than reciting the surface concept back at you. potentially finding a way to cheat their way to the applause lights.
I wonder if it would be possible to trick them into changing the goal from “correctly recite this password” to, “get every password right”.
The exact link escapes me but someone suggested a concept that is useful to think about is, “The Desire To Pass Tests”, which if your student has, can be all it takes to succeed. What do you think of TDTPT?
I think all of these strategies give the type of student I’m talking about too much credit, as they are mostly emotional creatures not prone to strategic planning. I guess TDTPT comes closest, but I would change it to a phrase I use with my students: “It’s fun to be right.” IFTBR.
Easy trivia apps were all the rage among my students a couple years ago. Nobody was trying to get a high score or trying to advance to the next level, but if you put a question in front of someone that they think they know the answer to, the urge to get validation for knowing it is irresistible. You’ve probably seen ads on the internet that work on this principle.
It’s why Who Wants to Be a Millionaire always started off with insultingly easy questions, and why easy cards in the class Anki deck are so important for raising participation and morale.
Good question, but no, I wouldn’t say these students are trying to guess the password. The cards they’re remembering aren’t complex enough to qualify. The answer is the answer, not a surface representation of some deeper knowledge they’re skipping.
This feels more like a case of selective attention, of perking up and caring more about cards they see as “in their wheelhouse”. It’s an easy way of being better than everyone else at something, even if that something is pretty narrow. If you’ve ever done any cooperative social gaming, you can probably recall analogous situations where new players spontaneously start seeing themselves as specialists with some power-up, weapon, player class, etc. It’s a land grab for the ego, and mostly just harmless fun.
Remembering passwords takes effort; a mystical incantation is harder to memorize than an answer you can logically derive from deeper knowledge. Hence, password guessing is something I mostly see in students who are grade obsessed, and I don’t get too many of those.
What I am suggesting is that in “knowing one card”, they have thoroughly decided to commit to knowing the password in this one field. They are essentially checking out from doing anything other than reciting the surface concept back at you. potentially finding a way to cheat their way to the applause lights.
I wonder if it would be possible to trick them into changing the goal from “correctly recite this password” to, “get every password right”.
The exact link escapes me but someone suggested a concept that is useful to think about is, “The Desire To Pass Tests”, which if your student has, can be all it takes to succeed. What do you think of TDTPT?
I think all of these strategies give the type of student I’m talking about too much credit, as they are mostly emotional creatures not prone to strategic planning. I guess TDTPT comes closest, but I would change it to a phrase I use with my students: “It’s fun to be right.” IFTBR.
Easy trivia apps were all the rage among my students a couple years ago. Nobody was trying to get a high score or trying to advance to the next level, but if you put a question in front of someone that they think they know the answer to, the urge to get validation for knowing it is irresistible. You’ve probably seen ads on the internet that work on this principle.
It’s why Who Wants to Be a Millionaire always started off with insultingly easy questions, and why easy cards in the class Anki deck are so important for raising participation and morale.