How and Why You Should Implement Group Incentives in Your Classroom
How to motivate students now.
The NBA Playoffs are back and once again I’m in awe at how much harder they play compared to the regular season. Why does Lebron James become an unstoppable force in the playoffs? Why does James Soften become James Harden? There’s much more on the line in the playoffs: glory, national attention, and millions of dollars at stake in the form of ticket sales, television deals, and advertisement deals. The players of the winning team in the NBA Finals split ~$4 million. Although the players are motivated by more than just money, it seems reasonable to incentivize them with part of the ~$300 million that the NBA makes just in advertising money for the NBA Finals. The NBA would be disrespecting the players if they didn’t award scaled bonuses for playoff performance.
Group incentives are a powerful way to motivate people now using future value that they generate. The NBA seems to use group incentives effectively with pools of money that players split in the playoffs. Large corporations seem to use group incentives effectively — they often give employees stocks and options which represent future value of the company. Here the future value is objective and concrete — the NBA makes exactly this much from advertising in the playoffs and the company’s stock is worth exactly this much.
But how can group incentives be used more effectively in schools, where the future value of learning is more abstract? Regardless of how abstract or how difficult to measure the future value is, it’s important to use that value to motivate people now. In my time in the classroom as a student and teacher I have seen group incentives used both wonderfully and terribly, and often group incentives are criminally underused. Group incentives in schools can be difficult to execute, they can be counterproductive if executed poorly, and they can be controversial among teachers; but when executed well, group incentives are a powerful tool to maximize learning.
Although the future value of learning is abstract and deeper than a numerical value, it’s helpful to quantify part of this value — at least to justify using a fraction of it for incentives now. Economist Raj Chetty has an insightful study that reveals just how much value is gained from being in an effective classroom. He found that replacing an teacher of average effectiveness (a teacher in the 50th percentile of value-added on test scores) with a highly effective teacher (a teacher in the 95th percentile) causes kids to earn higher incomes, be more likely to go to college, and be less likely to become teenage mothers. (I don’t use the word “cause” lightly; the study uses a dataset of 2.5 million students, and there is great quasi-experimental design with controls.) On average, swapping this average teacher with a highly effective teacher raises a child’s cumulative lifetime income by $80,000, or a present value of $14,500 if that money would grow at 5% a year. In a class of 25, the present value generated by this effective teaching/learning in a school year is about $360,000, some of which should be used to motivate the players now!
Imagine telling a student that her effort this year could be worth [a present value of] $14,500. It’s so abstract for a kid to understand just how valuable her learning is; she’d probably respond, “How does learning fractions now let me earn more money later?” It’s precisely because the future value is so abstract and surprising that we need to translate it into incentives for now.
Implementing Group Incentives
There are many creative ways to translate the future value of kids’ learning into incentives now. Across the nation our favorite group incentive in schools is a pizza party, but external motivation via some kind of currency tends to be more effective. My school used “Wolf PRIDE Cards” that students could redeem for snacks and other goodies at lunch on Fridays. Some of my elementary school teacher friends [narcissistically] use “Lunch with the Teacher” passes. Schools often use some kind of currency to award individual achievement (i.e. for honor roll) and good character, but we should award it for whole group achievements too; learning is inherently social and the classroom environment created by the group is essential to a kid’s individual learning.
What are some ways to use external motivation in currency form to motivate students? You can award Wolf PRIDE Cards to the whole class in a way that is scaled to the average performance on a test. If a single unit of your external motivation currency happens to be too valuable to award to the full class, then instead you can select a random subset of students to receive a unit of currency with a random name generator. For example, you can tell the class, “Your learning on this next test is really important, and learning is very valuable to your future in real ways! To honor that real future value, for every percentage point above 80% the class average is, I will award two Wolf PRIDE cards randomly to people in the class.”
While test performance is likely the strongest correlator with future value generated, there are other valid ways to award group incentives in the form of a currency. You can give whole group incentives based on the ability to answer challenge problems (I loved doing this with my AP Physics Class with whole group debates/discussions often with a Four Corners procedure), performance on group projects, or other performance assessments. I think it’s totally fine to have whole group incentives that are more based on behavior or culture instead of the pure learning, because behavior and culture affect the group’s learning experience. But you should always frame it carefully — emphasize that the reward for the behavior exists mainly to uphold the value of their learning.
Although such group incentives can be a powerful way to maximize learning, they can go awry with poor technique. The camp that says, “Extrinsic motivation is bad, we want kids to be intrinsically motivated,” have usually arrived at that conclusion after seeing poorly executed extrinsic motivation. Let’s look at some ways extrinsic motivation can be poorly executed.
Often the rewards/punishments are given for actions that don’t clearly generate future value; this is dishonest and ineffective. Often the conditions of the rewards/punishments are poorly defined and communicated, which often leads to the teacher’s emotions being strongly correlated to the rewards/punishments — this can be scarring for kids. Another common issue is that rewards are framed poorly. Without proper framing students will default to perceiving the reward as bribery to do work to simply get things done. These incentives are not about making teachers/students’ lives easier; they’re about recognizing and honoring future value in students’ learning. Always overstate that the incentives are about the future value of their learning.
Group Incentives Can Be Controversial
There are many teachers in the “Extrinsic motivation is bad” camp that will say, “Won’t this teach kids to just do things for money, instead of because they intrinsically like it?” People tend to look at motivation as either being pure or greedy. Either they do it because they love the subject or they do it because of external motivators (grades, college prospects, social pressure, pleasing parents & teachers, Wolf PRIDE cards, etc.). But in reality, every student is motivated by both love of the subject and external motivators. These two forms of motivations occur at varying proportions in every student: some kids will be motivated more by love of the subject and some will be motivated more by external factors. These motivations aren’t necessarily at odds with each other. And we all agree that every teacher should be working to increase how much students are motivated by love of the subject.
Often extrinsic motivation causes learning and confidence which leads to intrinsic motivation! Without any extrinsic motivators, the kids who were lucky enough to walk into your class loving the subject will disproportionately benefit; relying on just intrinsic motivation is inequitable in that it harms the kids who haven’t yet grown the intrinsic motivation. One reason that so many teachers fall into the “Extrinsic motivation is bad” camp is poor theory of mind: teachers were often super intrinsically motivated and they assume that most of their students operate in that mode.
Why do we not make the argument “Won’t this teach them to do it only for the incentive?” when incentives are used in other parts of society? Does giving a teacher a bonus get him to teach well just for the bonus? Does giving a scientist a Nobel prize for a discovery get her to discover just for the prize?
“All these GrOuP iNcEnTivEs are going to do is get more kids to cheat! How dare you!” Please calm down, sir. You have a point: whenever you decide to incorporate incentives you must think about how these can become perverse incentives; incorporating group incentives based on test performance creates a marginally higher incentive for students to cheat on the test. Now we have a tradeoff between incentivizing better test performance and incentivizing more cheating. However, I believe the positive effects clearly outweigh the negative effects, and those negative effects can be easily mediated with better test protocols.
Often times teachers who dislike external motivation will unfairly put external motivation at odds with other motivational systems. But these different ways of motivating are usually additive, and will catch various subsets of students. Motivating via teacher-student relationships and accountability should catch most students — this is the most important way to motivate. Motivating via individual incentives (such as grades, currency for individual feats, praise, etc.) will give an additional motivational boost to a subset of students. Motivating via group incentives (such as a currency for group feats) will give another motivational boost to another subset of students. With good technique, external motivation will catch some formerly disengaged and disenfranchised students.
Let’s compare a classroom with just individual incentives (like being graded on a 0–100% scale) to a classroom with both individual incentives and group incentives. In the class with just individual incentives, some lower-ability students will inevitably look at higher-ability students and feel disillusioned or jealous or ashamed, and some will disidentify with the material. They will decide they dislike a subject that they might have otherwise enjoyed. When this happens they will tend to respond less to the individual incentives.
However, let’s look at these same kids in the class with both individual incentives and group incentives. While they may have decided they don’t care that much about their own test grade, they will still have incentives to care for the whole class’s average test grade — because they could get Wolf PRIDE cards to buy Flaming Hot Cheetos! The lower-ability students have the most room to grow and the most potential to lift the class average, so it’s more likely that these kids will now get more help outside of class… perhaps from those higher-ability students.
With just individual incentives, higher-ability students are motivated to help lower-ability students because they are kind people; but with individual incentives and group incentives, higher-ability students are motivated to help lower-ability students because they are kind people and because they want Wolf PRIDE cards to buy Flaming Hot Cheetos. By just taking the 1 minute to explain the group incentive a couple days before the test, some of your lower-ability students will benefit!
Implementing Another Type of Group Incentive
So far, the main kind of group incentive I’ve discussed is based on average group performance, where there’s roughly evenly-weighted pressure on every student. However, there’s another type of group incentive that can be even trickier to execute: one that puts proportionally more pressure on the lower-performing students. I used this type of group incentive when I taught graphing mechanics with a group quiz last year. Learning (and enthusiasm!) increased significantly. I sequentially cold-called 4 students to graph a motion representation, and they could each add something, modify something, or declare it perfect — if it was perfect then the whole class could forego the individual graphing quiz (idea from Anna Sluka). The positive social pressure and the prospect of foregoing an individual graphing quiz expedited students’ learning, and the enthusiasm itself had lasting positive effects on the learning environment.
It’s important to be careful with this type of group incentive where a lower-performing student can be responsible for additional work for the whole class. Without a good class culture this could fail — there could be frustration and shaming from peers. The task should be achievable for all students. In my graphing quiz it was important to frame the individual graphing quiz as the default, and that a group achievement can earn them the reward of foregoing the individual quiz; you don’t want students to perceive that they’re being punished for poor group performance.
Sports examples usually make people more receptive to the idea of group incentives that put more pressure on lower-performing students. When I coached middle school volleyball I did a 3 v 3 passing drill in which all the players had to touch the ball before passing it over, but my group incentive was that for every error I would add 5 more seconds of planks for the end-of-practice fitness. This proportionally put more pressure on the less-experienced players, but they always responded positively.
Although all my volleyball players have internal motivation to improve, this incentive reduced loafing and increased motivation from the comparatively less motivated players. This group incentive also caused the more experienced players to help the less experienced players outside of the evaluative portion of this drill. Part of the reason my team responded well to this Pigovian tax was because they understood the future value generated in this drill and how important it was for the less-experienced players to improve — I used to always say, “In volleyball you’re only as good your 6th best player.” Also, planks of varying durations at the end of practice were common, so there was little shame associated with the plank “punishment”.
Many classrooms can similarly get positive results from carefully incorporating a group incentive that puts proportionally more weight on low-performing students. Less motivated students will certainly wake up, and the learning catalyzed by this group incentive could be very empowering to these students.
Whether the group incentives you implement weigh evenly on every student or weigh proportionally more on lower-performing students, they will certainly increase learning when executed well. In summary, many competent institutions, from the NBA to large corporations, use future value to motivate people now. There are huge amounts of future value generated in effective classrooms — something on the order of $360,000 per effective classroom according to Raj Chetty. Schools need to follow suit with all the other competent institutions in society and use future value to motivate in the present. Group incentives should systematically be worked into annual planning and unit planning, and they should be implemented on the classroom level and the school level. Implementing group incentives can be controversial and tricky to execute, but it is worth it.
