Enhancing Learning with Praise

Praise should work,   but how do you deliver it, and best understand its behavioral implications?  Contextual influence?   This is an example I want to see more data on.

Motivational Artificial Beings Better Than 1 for Enhancing Learning

University of Tsukuba (Japan)

November 5, 2020

A study by researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan found that praise delivered by robots and virtual graphics-based agents has an impact similar to that of praise delivered by humans, when it comes to improving offline learning. Study participants learned a finger-tapping task under different conditions over a two-day period, with variations in timing and frequency of praise, the number of agents, and whether the agents were physically present or on a screen. Said the university's Takamasa Iio, "We found that praise led to a measurable increase in task performance, indicating increased offline consolidation of the task. Further, two agents led to significantly greater participant performance than one agent, even when the amount of praise was identical."

Purpose

I often follow university and lab work of interest that matches my long problem solving experience.  Sometimes I mention it for my own future purposes, or if I know someone else could find it useful.  We had many  people visit our innovation centers.  and I said the blog would be a place to follow new advances.   I do not get paid to place particular posts here,   but always glad to use or discuss the ideas involved. 

Motivation and Goodwill

Intriguing motivation augmentation via goodwill?  How universally and continuously does this work with other goals?

New Tool Shows Goodwill May Trump Profit as Work Motivator
University of Waterloo News
June 11, 2019

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada studying a new online work-sharing platform designed to give charities money found that people committing their skills and labor to a specific task tended to be more productive if they knew a preferred charity would be paid, rather than themselves. The PledgeWork platform lets employers post tasks, deposit the cost for the job, and select the charities to contribute the task’s cost to, or let volunteers choose. The volunteers select tasks, as well as the charity they want to support, unless pre-specified. Once the task is completed, the requester verifies the task results match their criteria, then approves a donation to the specified charity. Waterloo's Edward Lank suggests the platform may help people surmount perceived obstacles to charitable donations, "in a way that allows people to use their skills to benefit a charity anonymously." ... ' 

Work Motivation

From HBS Working Knowledge, Covers a number of motivations.

Motivate Me, Please
  
People are often coin-operated when it comes to work, but managers can bring out their best performance by using other motivators.

Former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy was known to criticize staff for being "coin-operated" instead of mission-driven. Understanding what motivates good performance is crucial for managers to master. Here is a collection of stories from our archive that highlight Harvard Business School research on motivation  ... "

Start with Why

Good thing,  easy to remember.

Starting with “Why”  By Bob Apollo  in CustomerThink

In September 2009, Simon Sinek took the stage at a TEDx event and delivered an 18-minute presentation that has now been viewed around 50 million times across a variety of different sites.

In it, Sinek offered a model for inspirational leadership that he explored in his best-selling “Start With Why”. He has gone on to be widely recognised as an expert in how leading organisations and people think, act and communicate.

I’m a fan. I believe what he believes.

If you’re unfamiliar with Sinek’s work, I’ve included a link to his presentation below. His concept of the Golden Circle – grounded in the biology of human decision making – helps us understand why some messages resonate while others fail. And it has tremendous relevance for successful B2B sales conversations  … '

Shareology: Why we Share and How We Can do it Better

Reading Bryan Kramer's new book  Shareology: How Sharing is Powering the Human Economy. Addresses sharing among humans in general, and also why I run a blog and am interested in what I do.  So far a very good and surprisingly up to date book.   It maps some of my own experiences.  Will review further when I complete it.

Gamification Study

An empirical study, they say.   Worth a look.

Does Gamification Work? Recent Empirical Study Shows Positive Results

" ... A research paper produced for the 2014 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences carefully reviews twenty-four scholarly empirical research studies which all focused directly on the success of gamification. These studies were broken into three parts: motivational affordances, psychological outcomes, and behavioral outcomes. The motivational affordances predominantly included points, leaderboards, and badges. The psychological outcomes included motivation, attitude, and enjoyment. The behavioral outcomes “used experiments or statistical analyses from existing services or implementations designed by the researchers” to measure response patterns and task performance and also investigated use intentions through survey methods. ... "