Grades as a motivator

We have been talking about how it seems that many or most students only respond to grades for motivation. I gave a mini-test (25 questions) in Econ today on marginal analysis, which is very technical and can be overwhelming to most students. The results were excellent - most students got an A or B, which in this case shows they truly understood the concepts. The key (I believe) is that I gave them plenty of chances to practice marginal analysis in class, with the opportunity for immediate feedback from me. I did not grade them on any of this, yet they still did it and - most importantly - learned from their mistakes and the resulting feedback. Now perhaps they did so because they wanted to do well on the mini-test, but it seemed to me that they realized that LEARNING, rather than going through the motions, is the key to getting good grades.

Mixed results

Friday in World Civilizations I decided to try out an activity that I had only done with honors students, and see whether it would work with regular students. The idea was to meet in groups and find what connections they could discover between the different Chinese dynasties. (Don't worry - I did give them some guidance as to what I was expecting.) Then the groups shared these with the class.
In my first two classes (which always have higher class averages than the other two), I was very pleased with the connections they came up with. Some were more obvious, which is totally fine, but others really showed a lot of insight. In my two other classes, though, I was disappointed. They did come up with some good ideas, but usually many fewer than in the first two classes. Several groups wasted a lot of time before really getting down to work, despite my encouragement. Also, groups in these classes were more likely to come up with the same ideas, simply because they were the more obvious ones. A lot of this just boils down to group dynamics, as well as the fact that some students do not function at their best late in the day on a Friday.
Still, overall I felt that this was an experiment worth repeating. For the most part, they rose to the challenge.