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Though many studies suggest the positive effects of leaderboard on participants’ learning and motivation, research also shows that not all students benefit from the use of leaderboard. Based on self-determination theory (SDT), this study examined how students’ actual competence, perceived competence, perceived autonomy, and perceived relatedness affected students’ enjoyment and intention for future participation in a leaderboard-based math practice game. The results showed that both perceived competence and perceived autonomy were closely related to students’ enjoyment and intention for future participation, while students’ actual competence and perceived relatedness were not related to their enjoyment or intention for future participation in such leaderboard-based math practice games. The findings of the study offer valuable insights and recommendations for both gamification research and practice.

 

In this study, two universities created and implemented a student-centered graduate student instructor observation protocol (GSIOP) and a post-observational Red-Yellow-Green feedback structure (RYG feedback). The GSIOP and RYG feedback was used with novice mathematics graduate student instructors (GSIs) by experienced GSIs through a peer-mentorship program. Ten trained mentor GSIs observed novice GSIs, completed a GSIOP, and provided RYG feedback as part of an observation-feedback cycle. This generated 50 semester-long data sets of three observation-feedback cycles of novice GSIs. Analyzing these data sets helped identify how certain feedback influenced GSIOP scores. 

In this study, two universities created and implemented a student-centered graduate student instructor observation protocol (GSIOP) and a post-observational Red-Yellow-Green feedback structure (RYG feedback). The GSIOP and RYG feedback was used with novice graduate student instructors (GSIs) by experienced GSIs through a peer-mentorship program. Ten trained mentor GSIs completed 50 sets of three observations of novice GSIs. Analyzing 151 GSIOPs and 151 RYG feedback meetings longitudinally provided insight to identify what types of feedback informed and influenced GSIOP scores. After qualitatively coding feedback along multiple dimensions, we found certain forms of feedback were more influential for GSI development than others with respect to change in GSIOP score. Our results indicate contextually-specific feedback leads to more observed changes and improvement across multiple observations than decontextualized feedback. 

We developed and implemented a peer-mentoring program at two US universities whereby nine experienced mathematics graduate student instructors (GSIs) each mentored three or four first- and second-year GSIs (novices). Mentors facilitated bi-weekly small group meetings with context-specific support to help novices use active-learning techniques and augment productive discourse (Smith & Stein, 2011). Meeting discussion topics were informed by novices’ interests, concerns raised by both mentors and novices, and ideas from other small groups. We examined what topics from small-group peer-mentoring meetings novices valued and timing of the topics that mentors suggested for future cycles. We qualitatively coded meeting topics and analyzed novices’ ratings of topics discussed. Results indicate specific topics novices valued and the importance of timing some topics appropriately, informing future professional development for GSIs. These results offer insight and synergy between educating GSIs and improving undergraduate mathematics teacher pedagogy.