I think most students have experienced the situation: Sometimes you just cannot get yourself to solve an arduous problem set. The next week you can’t find time to do it because of extracurricular activities. After that you realise that you have fallen far behind on the course and give up on solving problemsets all together. Finally during the summer it dawns on you that this wasn’t the best idea.
During a statistics course I made a deal with a friend: Every time one of us didn’t show up in the exercise classes or didn’t solve his exercise he had to buy the other one a coffee.
The small “punishment” of 2.- and the chance of getting a “reward”-coffee was enough for us to solve all but one exercise and show up for a 7:45 exercise class.
I think it would help a lot of students if we could find a way of implementing such direct reward systems on a bigger level.
What is your opinion on that?
Karin Brown 3 years, 3 months ago.
