Using Choice and Utility Value to Promote Interest: Stimulating Situational Interest in a Lesson and Fostering the Development of Interest in Statistics.

Abstract

What can educators do to trigger and maintain their students' interest during a class or lecture, and how can they help students develop interest that persists when instruction ends? In the present research, we conducted a series of seven laboratory experiments (total N = 2,019), in which undergraduate students learned about statistics. In these studies, we tested two manipulations, each theorized to promote a different phase of interest development: (i) we provided students with meaningful choices as they learned, hypothesized to trigger and maintain situational interest, and (ii) we presented students with information about the utility value (i.e., usefulness) of the topic for commonly valued goals, an instructional practice theorized to promote the development of longer-term interest. An internal meta-analysis of these experiments showed that both manipulations independently promoted situational interest in the topic, but only the choice manipulation was effective at promoting self-reported attention and engagement during the session. In contrast, only the utility value manipulation led students to request resources about statistics (e.g., a list of statistics courses at the university, information about a data-science major), a behavioral indicator of interest in the topic that extended beyond the session. This evidence suggests that beliefs about the usefulness of academic content for personal goals can play an important and unique role in the development of enduring interest, and it points to the promise of multifaceted instructional approaches that can catch and hold students' interest via multiple, distinct mechanisms.