The concept of building autonomy for students to self-regulate their pace in the course had the goal of personalizing learning through the internal and external motivations found in our gameful design. To that end, students were encouraged to engage in the course as they saw fit. While the course did suggest time periods for each activity and quests as a whole, students had the freedom to navigate this at a consistent and productive pace. As I have touched on competency and personal goals, the course provided opportunities for competency by motivating students to strive for their best self in their responses and understanding of history. The ability not to have penalties for "lateness" and set personal goals had different impacts on my students. As some strived through a creative system where personalization and independent choice-making was possible, others struggled with their self-regulation and had difficulties developing self-determination. 

 

It is by no means an easy task to develop self-determination, as motivation is not binary but rather fluctuates as multiple factors impact motivation (Sansone, Geerling, Thoman &.Smith, 2019)  which is why I want to be observant about the data I have collected on student motivation, rather than being too conclusive. I will take notice of student-reflection when looking at learning outcomes and the development of historical thinking in my students through the interventions of personalized learning through self-motivation, self-determination, and goal setting. 

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I have made an effort to connect personalized learning as a means of motivation and the ability to increase self-efficacy through self-regulation and self-determination. As I wanted to design a gamified course that created a student-centered approach, I wanted to reach students in their individual place of development as historians to inspire them to be their best selves.

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In the vein of creating a gamified course that still permits personalized learning with the goal of reaching competency in historical thinking, this gave space for a learning environment that embraced risk and failure. As students embraced personalized learning, the curriculum did not promote any "late" penalties, but rather encouraged students to take their time to meet competency in the content. In the attempt of reaching for competency, students were welcomed to resubmit their work to reach maximum scores in their assessments and assignments without any penalties for "half" credit for resubmission. The ability to take risks and receive feedback on how to improve on their work allowed students to reach for competency and fostered an environment where students could improve in their progress as historians. When there are not many opportunities to take risks, perhaps we could miss learning opportunities. 

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While goal permitted students to reach for competency, not all students took advantage of such redeeming resubmission. As students met the goals of the course by handing in and completing assignments to move ahead on the course, some students did not take opportunities to improve their work through resubmissions. This could draw parameters between students who met their goals as performing approach, a way of proving one's ability versus a mastery approach, that is to improve in ability. (Dweck, Cohen & Walton 2014) The parameter of resubmissions with feedback to improve on their work and meet intrinsic (joy of history) or extrinsic (grades) motivations creates pathways that engage students to take learning into their own matters and giving them the choice and encouragement to become their best self in multiple areas.

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As touched upon earlier, grades and feedback are major indicators to reach competency and track a learning process. Adopting a point-scale grading that showed an incremental effect showed room for incremental growth in students' mindsets. (Blackwell, Dweck & Trzesniewski 2007). In the first year of my residency, I was always curious about the language students approached me with after giving feedback on assignments. Knowing that grades are significant for students, as they can be the ultimate measure for improvement and knowledge, I noticed that students would ask for feedback that was too focused on grades. I noticed this by my pupils' language when they approached, "Why did I get points off in this paragraph?" The phrasing "points off" sounded like a penalty and as if students had already gained those points, to begin with. I wanted to direct students to the places where they could improve, but such language and mindset made it sound more about the penalty and not the growth. Therefore, I designed an incremental scale to acquire points to see if students could change their language and ask, "how can I gain more points," thus showing a mastery approach and improving their work. I would want to correlate this small experiment to the incremental theory that Blackwell, Dweck & Trzesniewski (2007) notice in their studies as the promotion of such theory led to increasing effects in motivation, supporting ideas of theories for intelligence as malleable.

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The adoption of an incremental grading scale made feedback more valuable. In the first year of my residency, I wondered how effective feedback was if students did not have the opportunity to apply that specific feedback to the current assignment. The hope of providing feedback was so that students could use it for the future, but I wondered how effective it could and if students would retain it for future assessments. Giving feedback without a chance to make a resubmission felt like I was telling the student, "sorry, better luck next time. Here is what you need to do." Not having the opportunity to improve on their assessments through resubmissions did very little to foster an environment that promotes risk-taking. If stakes are high, students will not take risks that would show their creativity and novel thinking. Therefore, I prioritized providing a good balance of feedback to advance the student's learning by allowing resubmissions, fostering risk-taking, and encouraging them to reach competency. That way, students could fulfill intrinsic (joy of learning ) and extrinsic (grades/points) motivators.