most students are interested

There are several qualities that admissions officers look for in applicants interested in business: Academics: Quantitative and analytical aptitude Clear and focused interest within business Demonstrated excellence in business-related activities Strong evidence of leadership Effective communication skills — written and verbal Academics In those 34 percent students, only half of them read it once a week. The result show that politic is still the part that most students are not interested in and may skip. Therefore, the Internet still not change the fact that students ignore politics. In addition, because of the intense schedule, students leave no time for politics. The Sydney Health app has replaced the Student Health app for easy access to everything you need to know about your medical, pharmacy, dental and vision coverage. If you are interested in retaining a Pennsylvania unemployment compensation attorney for your hearing, please contact me. At this time, the UC courtesy phones are not operational. Students are practically interested in varied topics that they could relate to or apply to their lives. Most often these youths have eclectic ideas they want their fingers to dip into that boost their self-esteem and could share with their colleagues. Most often they're interested in: *Dynamics of Personality *Personality Development Only 38 percent said the majority of their students seem naturally interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The sample is nationally representative, and the survey was Truth Statements: Ask students to write a one sentence "truth statement" about an upcoming unit topic, "reading between the lines", the most interesting day of your class, what they do when the get stuck in text, etc. It's a simple way to find out what they find interesting, easy and difficult. Think Aloud: Select a portion of a text that you landerpsine1980. Most middle and high school students are not interested in science, math, and even space, teachers said in a new national poll, commissioned by Lockheed Martin, an aerospace and defense contracting company, asked 1,000 middle and high school teachers about their views on student interest in science and math. Only 38 percent said the majority of their students seem naturally interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The sample is nationally representative, and the survey was conducted online from April 5-11. Out of those four subjects, 69 percent of teachers said their students are most interested in technology. Forty-two percent said their students are most interested in science, 25 percent of teachers’ students are most interested in engineering, and just 14 percent of teachers said their students are most interested in math. Fewer than half of teachers—41 percent—said their students are eager to learn about space-related topics like planets, the solar system, space travel, and space exploration does that mean for future space missions? Lockheed Martin says that the first human mission to Mars will take place in the 2030s—meaning that the crew members are likely sitting in classrooms right now. To help bridge the gap between students’ enthusiasm and the country’s need for future scientists, engineers, and space explorers, the company released free resources, developed in partnership with Discovery Education, for middle school teachers to engage their students in STEM resources include space-themed lesson plans and activities, like a space-exploration career survey and a project to design a vehicle that can launch into space. Lockheed Martin also put out a free virtual-reality app that gives students an interactive tour of Mars. Last year, Lockheed Martin built a school bus that simulates the experience of traveling across Mars’ surface.Meanwhile, the teachers surveyed had some ideas about how to get their students interested. A quarter said their current school curriculum does not sufficiently prepare students for a STEM career, and a majority—65 percent—said they need standards-aligned supplemental STEM resources for students. More money would also help Only 31 percent of teachers said the school budget is sufficient to prepare students for a STEM career. Finally, many indicated current advances in space exploration could pique students’ interests 52 percent of teachers said it would help if there was a return to the moon in the near more ideas on how teachers can encourage their students’ interest in space, check out this blog in which a middle school teacher describes how she uses a science simulator, social media, and other hands-on activities in class to get her students excited about learning. Photo courtesy of Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education Images of Teachers and Students in Action, licensed under Creative CommonsMore on Cultivating Students’ Interest in STEMMath Makes the World More Beautiful' A Professor’s Advice on Teaching MathWater Filters and Space A Glimpse Into a Next-Generation Science ClassroomAdvice From the Science Classroom OpinionThe Martian’ Is Full of Math Word Problems, Says Author Andy Weir Madeline Will Madeline Will is a reporter for Education Week who covers the teaching profession. A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog. As we work daily to develop the skills of young readers, writers, speakers, listeners, and thinkers, we constantly consider this What will engage them? How will I relate the school content to their lives?As teachers striving to be culturally relevant, we do our best to include relatable materials into our curricula—articles, media, song lyrics, speeches, websites, and film and documentary clips. For many teachers, this is exciting stuff, but for others—particularly new teachers who already feel overwhelmed by planning, grading, and management—it’s worrisome. Finding relevant, engaging material to use with students definitely takes time and Ideas From StudentsWhat’s the easiest way to know what students are interested in? What are the issues most on their minds? Ask them. Ask them often, and in multiple ways. Find out what they are into—the latest music, fad, or Netflix series they’re all watching. It’s our job to know the culture of our students. And culture goes beyond ethnicity and includes also age group, trends, concerns, and interests.As teachers we become researchers of the lives of the specific group of students whom we teach. So be sure to routinelyRead the latest children’s books or young adult novels and websites that cater to the age and interests of the grade level you caught up on local trends that are specific to the community where you teach. Trends can sometimes be limited to a specific region. Be aware of national kid/teen trends, like the current craze of fidget that last one, wouldn’t the seventh graders you teach be interested in reading an article about the origin of those spinners as well as the history of other fads—yo-yos, pet rocks, Slime, or the Slinky, for example—that have captured the attention of young Americans in the past?Survey Says!Mine for topics of interest by presenting students with questions, and then look for any patterns in their responses around music, for example. Next, ask yourself While teaching students the required skills and academic standards in the curriculum, in what ways can I center this as a topic in our unit of study? Here are a few general questions for a survey to get you started. Included are some responses that might be typical from secondary studentsWhat is something or someone you personally would like to know more about? [insert name of popular singer], computer coding, break dancing, construction, spoken wordMake a list of all the things that you don’t currently learn in school but wish you could. how to get your first job, saving money, cooking, designing video gamesWhat is a career/job you are super interested in? FBI agent, going to college, hairstylist, journalistWhat are things that personally bug you about the world? younger brothers, adults not trusting kids, pollution, that fast food is bad for you What is a problem of concern for people your age? gossip, unfair rules, not having money, gangsDesigning SurveysIf you and your students have access to the internet in class, a great way to develop student surveys is by utilizing free online survey tools such as Socrative, PollEverywhere, Kahoot, and Survey designing surveys using questions, and also pose a few statements using a five-point Likert scale. The latter can help you gauge student interest before a unit. You can say to students, “I tallied the numbers and there were twelve 5s and fourteen 4s, so that tells me the topic of _______ is of interest to most of you. We are going to explore that next.” With anonymity, students tend to be more candid and honest, so make including a name on the survey optional.Along with digital or paper surveys, you can collect student-interest data by listening in on small-group discussions. For example, have groups of four or five students brainstorm “problems of concern” for kids their Choice Is KeyIf we’re going to use the culture of students as a teaching tool, we need to let go more than we currently do when it comes to student choice. If you’re teaching expository writing, for example, be open to having all 32 students in your class write on a topic of their own interest rather than having the one or two or even three topics you’ve typically assigned in the recently asked my university students, who are studying to become English language arts teachers, this question “What was your jam when you were in high school?” Some of their responses manga, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Amy Tan, sports writing, and hip-hop music. I then inquired, “What if your English teachers had asked you this question and had designed learning activities and given you reading and writing choices that included your interests? How might that have impacted your effort, and your development as a reader and writer?” A lively discussion beauty of this craft is that as teachers, we can keep academic standards high and at the same time have our students engage in topics of interest, expertise, and concern. It just takes a little research to find out exactly what those are. Science & Technology Lessons in learning Sean Finamore '22 left and Xaviera Zime '22 study during a lecture in the Science Center. Photos by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer For decades, there has been evidence that classroom techniques designed to get students to participate in the learning process produces better educational outcomes at virtually all levels. And a new Harvard study suggests it may be important to let students know it. The study, published Sept. 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that, though students felt as if they learned more through traditional lectures, they actually learned more when taking part in classrooms that employed so-called active-learning strategies. Lead author Louis Deslauriers, the director of science teaching and learning and senior physics preceptor, knew that students would learn more from active learning. He published a key study in Science in 2011 that showed just that. But many students and faculty remained hesitant to switch to it. “Often, students seemed genuinely to prefer smooth-as-silk traditional lectures,” Deslauriers said. “We wanted to take them at their word. Perhaps they actually felt like they learned more from lectures than they did from active learning.” In addition to Deslauriers, the study is authored by director of sciences education and physics lecturer Logan McCarty, senior preceptor in applied physics Kelly Miller, preceptor in physics Greg Kestin, and Kristina Callaghan, now a physics lecturer at the University of California, Merced. The question of whether students’ perceptions of their learning matches with how well they’re actually learning is particularly important, Deslauriers said, because while students eventually see the value of active learning, initially it can feel frustrating. “Deep learning is hard work. The effort involved in active learning can be misinterpreted as a sign of poor learning,” he said. “On the other hand, a superstar lecturer can explain things in such a way as to make students feel like they are learning more than they actually are.” Director of sciences education and physics lecturer Logan McCarty is the co-author of a new study that says students who take part in active learning actually learn more than they think they do. Using these principles, he teaches Physical Science 12B in the Science Center. To understand that dichotomy, Deslauriers and his co-authors designed an experiment that would expose students in an introductory physics class to both traditional lectures and active learning. For the first 11 weeks of the 15-week class, students were taught using standard methods by an experienced instructor. In the 12th week, half the class was randomly assigned to a classroom that used active learning, while the other half attended highly polished lectures. In a subsequent class, the two groups were reversed. Notably, both groups used identical class content and only active engagement with the material was toggled on and off. Following each class, students were surveyed on how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as “I feel like I learned a lot from this lecture” and “I wish all my physics courses were taught this way.” Students were also tested on how much they learned in the class with 12 multiple-choice questions. When the results were tallied, the authors found that students felt as if they learned more from the lectures, but in fact scored higher on tests following the active learning sessions. “Actual learning and feeling of learning were strongly anticorrelated,” Deslauriers said, “as shown through the robust statistical analysis by co-author Kelly Miller, who is an expert in educational statistics and active learning.” Those results, the study authors are quick to point out, shouldn’t be interpreted as suggesting students dislike active learning. In fact, many studies have shown students quickly warm to the idea, once they begin to see the results. “In all the courses at Harvard that we’ve transformed to active learning,” Deslauriers said, “the overall course evaluations went up.” Source “Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom,” Louis Deslauriers, Logan S. McCarty, Kelly Miller, Kristina Callaghan, and Greg Kestin Co-author Kestin, who in addition to being a physicist is a video producer with PBS’ NOVA, said, “It can be tempting to engage the class simply by folding lectures into a compelling story,’ especially when that’s what students seem to like. I show my students the data from this study on the first day of class to help them appreciate the importance of their own involvement in active learning.” McCarty, who oversees curricular efforts across the sciences, hopes this study will encourage more of his colleagues to embrace active learning. “We want to make sure that other instructors are thinking hard about the way they’re teaching,” he said. “In our classes, we start each topic by asking students to gather in small groups to solve some problems. While they work, we walk around the room to observe them and answer questions. Then we come together and give a short lecture targeted specifically at the misconceptions and struggles we saw during the problem-solving activity. So far we’ve transformed over a dozen classes to use this kind of active-learning approach. It’s extremely efficient — we can cover just as much material as we would using lectures.” A pioneer in work on active learning, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics Eric Mazur hailed the study as debunking long-held beliefs about how students learn. “This work unambiguously debunks the illusion of learning from lectures,” he said. “It also explains why instructors and students cling to the belief that listening to lectures constitutes learning. I recommend every lecturer reads this article.” Dean of Science Christopher Stubbs, Samuel C. Moncher Professor of Physics and of Astronomy, was an early convert. “When I first switched to teaching using active learning, some students resisted that change. This research confirms that faculty should persist and encourage active learning. Active engagement in every classroom, led by our incredible science faculty, should be the hallmark of residential undergraduate education at Harvard.” Ultimately, Deslauriers said, the study shows that it’s important to ensure that neither instructors nor students are fooled into thinking that lectures are the best learning option. “Students might give fabulous evaluations to an amazing lecturer based on this feeling of learning, even though their actual learning isn’t optimal,” he said. “This could help to explain why study after study shows that student evaluations seem to be completely uncorrelated with actual learning.” This research was supported with funding from the Harvard FAS Division of Science. Journal List HHS Author Manuscripts PMC5839644 Policy Insights Behav Brain Sci. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 Mar in final edited form asPMCID PMC5839644NIHMSID NIHMS945590AbstractInterest is a powerful motivational process that energizes learning, guides academic and career trajectories, and is essential to academic success. Interest is both a psychological state of attention and affect toward a particular object or topic, and an enduring predisposition to reengage over time. Integrating these two definitions, the four-phase model of interest development guides interventions that promote interest and capitalize on existing interests. Four interest-enhancing interventions seem useful attention-getting settings, contexts evoking prior individual interest, problem-based learning, and enhancing utility value. Promoting interest can contribute to a more engaged, motivated, learning experience for interest, education, achievement gaps, motivation, social-psychological interventions, problem-based learning, personalization, utility value, expectancy-value, educational policyTweetDiscover 4 interventions that promote interest, the science behind them, and policies that put student interest at front of the classIntroductionWhether it be a “race to the top” or “no child left behind” or “every student succeeds,” educational policies focus on elevating students’ performance, with much less focus on sustaining students’ interest. Yet, when students are interested in an academic topic, they are more likely to go to class, pay attention, become engaged, take more courses, as well as process information effectively and ultimately perform well Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000. Students who discover academic interests in high school and college are better prepared for satisfying careers. Interest is a powerful motivational process that energizes learning and guides academic and career trajectories Renninger & Hidi, 2016. Can policies help instructors harness this motivation and thus help students develop interest?Defining InterestThe term interest can describe two distinct though often co-occurring experiences an individual’s momentary experience of being captivated by an object as well as more lasting feelings that the object is enjoyable and worth further exploration. Interest is, therefore, both a psychological state characterized by increased attention, effort, and affect, experienced in a particular moment situational interest, as well as an enduring predisposition to reengage with a particular object or topic over time individual interest; Hidi & Renninger, 2006. This duality not only highlights the richness of the interest concept but also contributes to the complexity of defining interest precisely. Situational interest combines affective qualities, such as feelings enjoyment and excitement, with cognitive qualities, such as focused attention and perceived value, all fostered by features of the situation Hidi & Renninger, 2006. For example, a student might enjoy an entertaining lecture about tsunamis, become fascinated by their power, engage more in the class, and appreciate the subject’s personal relevance. Thus, being in a state of interest means that affective reactions, perceived value, and cognitive functioning intertwine, and that attention and learning feel effortless Ainley, 2006; Dewey, 1913; Hidi, 2006. Situational interest relates to self-regulation, task engagement, and persistence Sansone & Thoman, 2005; Smith, Wagaman, & Handley, 2009; Thoman, Smith, & Silvia, 2011.Experiencing situational interest can directly promote learning by increasing attention and engagement. A student who sees a painting by Monet for the first time in an art history class may be captivated by the bright colors and unusual brushstrokes, and as a result, will pay more attention and engage more deeply. If that interest develops into an individual interest, the student will more likely reengage with the material overtime and explore the topic further Harackiewicz, Durik, Barron, Linnenbrink-Garcia, & Tauer, 2008. Interest, therefore, predicts traditional measures of educational success, including future course taking and interest highlights individuals’ stable preferences for specific content. Here, the immediate experience of interest reflects a well-developed personal preference to enjoy and value a particular subject or activity across situations. Individual interest is, therefore, a stable, underlying disposition activated in particular situations. For example, students interested in geophysics might be especially likely to be in a state of interest during a lecture on tsunamis, whether the lecture is entertaining or not, because their interest is more developed and less dependent on situational Situational Interest Becomes Individual InterestThe four-phase model of interest development Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Renninger & Hidi, 2016 integrates these two perspectives and their development Particular situations trigger interest, which can then develop across situations and over time to become more enduring. First, features of the environment novelty, ambiguity, surprise catch the person’s attention. This situational interest can last longer, beyond a single situation, if tasks seem meaningful and involving if the student perceives the task as valuable or enjoyable. Over time, repeated experiences of triggered and maintained situational interest can develop into an emerging individual interest, such that the individual seeks opportunities to reengage with the object. For example, if the student who was originally fascinated by the Monet painting also enjoys the teacher’s lecture about the Impressionist movement and then notices and appreciates the Monet reproductions on display at the dentist’s office, the student may decide to Google Monet’s paintings and order his biography from the library. Finally, this emerging individual interest can develop into a self-sustaining, well-developed, individual interest the student visits art museums and majors in art history.Progress through these phases requires an environment that supports individual pursuit of interests. For example, a school field trip to an art museum can foster a student’s developing interest in art. As individuals progress through these developmental phases, their connection to the object of interest becomes more stable and generalizable. Interest development begins in a specific situation, but by the time those interests are well developed, individuals make conscious choices and pursue their interests autonomously Renninger & Hidi, 2016. Indeed, as interest deepens across these four phases, individuals become increasingly aware of their own interest, as an important part of themselves consider themselves Monet enthusiasts.The four-phase model of interest development has implications for teaching practices. First, the model contends that interest develops gradually and that external support engaging lectures, school field trips can foster interest. This also implies that, without external support, interest can go dormant or even be abandoned. Second, the model indicates that students at different stages of interest development may benefit from different types of external support. When students are unfamiliar with a topic, teachers may be able to create environments that catch their attention by beginning a chemistry class with a demonstration of a chemical reaction. When students enter a situation with some pre-existing interest, however, teachers may be able to maintain those interests with interventions to expand their knowledge of the topic and solidify its perceived value. Thus, teachers can stimulate students’ developing new interests in the first two phases triggered and maintained situational interest, and maintain or strengthen interests for students in the second two phases emerging and well-developed individual interest. In so doing, teachers can foster students’ motivation and to Promote MotivationCultivating interest should not be an afterthought to the typical learning situation Interest is essential to academic success. Interventions to develop students’ interest matter in any educational context, but may be most needed in academic domains that many students do not find initially interesting or those domains in which interest typically declines over time. For example, in middle school and high school, students’ academic interests decline, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics STEM subjects Brophy, 2008; Eccles et al., 1993.There is no silver-bullet motivational intervention, and what works for one type of student or classroom context may not generalize we return to this point later. With that said, interest theory informs two intervention approachesTrigger and maintain situational interest Provide activities that use structural features problems, challenges, surprise to stimulate attention and engagement for all on emerging and well-developed individual interest Provide content and academic tasks that facilitate connecting academic topics with existing Figure 1 summarizes, these interventions target motivational processes expected to influence critical educational outcomes, and take the learner’s phase of interest development into model showing how interventions promote interest development and subsequent educational Students’ Situational Interest Structural FeaturesOne way to trigger interest is to structure learning activities in ways that catch students’ attention. Dewey 1913 argued that educational activities should awaken and excite the immediate needs of the individual. Berlyne 1970 identified a number of task features, called collative variables, which affect attention and arousal. In a series of studies, he varied the novelty, complexity, surprisingness, and incongruity of visual stimuli, and found that each of these collative variables increased attention, arousal, and interest. More broadly, these principles underlie many interventions intended to promote situational interest in educational contexts, which Renninger and Hidi 2016 refer to as “triggers for interest.” For example, various factors triggered situational interest in a college biology class, such as hands-on activities, novelty, surprise, and group work Palmer, 2009. Similar factors were important in ninth-grade biology classes, where novelty proved most important, but choice, physical activity, and social involvement were also Students’ Situational Interest Context PersonalizationAnother way to trigger students’ interest in a new subject is to leverage their existing individual interests by presenting instruction in the context of those interests. For example, to teach math to a musician, talk about the mathematical principles inherent in music. Building content around existing interests is an intuitive approach for educators. To be sure, taking stock of each student’s interests and adjusting the content accordingly is not without its practical challenges, particularly for instructors of large classes Walkington & Bernacki, 2014. Indeed, catering to the personal interests of a heterogeneous group of students who differ in their interests can be challenging and time-consuming Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000.However, advanced learning technologies that adjust content based on student preferences can provide feasible and scalable solutions for tailoring instruction to learners’ needs and interests, as in context personalization Collins & Halverson, 2009; Walkington & Bernacki, 2014. This practice matches instructional tasks with characters, objects, and themes of students’ out-of-school interests Cordova & Lepper, 1996; Høgheim & Reber, 2015. For example, in a physics class, a learner interested in extreme sports might be given a task that involves sky diving, to learn about gravity and air resistance. Even with content constraints about what students are expected to learn, the context of that content may be flexible. Personalized contexts connect new content to learner’s pre-existing individual interests. Students given personalized math problems work harder and perform better Walkington, 2013, with the most pronounced positive effects for students struggling with mathematics and among learners with low individual interest in the content interventions can be characterized along three dimensions depth, grain size, and ownership Walkington & Bernacki, 2014. Depth refers to the quality of the connections to learners’ existing interests. Here, interventions range from simple insertions of surface-level information about students’ interests a favorite movie to elaborate contextualized tasks that relate to students’ interests and hobbies. Grain size refers to the size of the reference group It differentiates between tasks that are tailored to the interest of an individual learner or to groups of learners such as a certain age group. Here, the intervention depends upon the homogeneity of the class and whether broad categories of personalization are relevant to a wide audience or smaller subgroups of students who would benefit from more individualized personalization. Ownership refers to the degree of autonomy in generating the personalization. Novel topics might require support from the instructor or peers to give ideas for personalization, but students can also play a role in personalizing their learning, which can create the deepest connections Walkington & Bernacki, 2014.For example, some groups of students Native Americans and Latinos benefit when the presentation of a science topic emphasizes giving back to their community, an important interest for these students Brown, Smith, Thoman, Allen, & Muragishi, 2015; Smith, Cech, Metz, Huntoon, & Moyer, 2014; Thoman, Brown, Mason, Harmsen, & Smith, 2015. An intervention designed to integrate topics of giving back to the community in a science course would be a deep, large-grained personalization intervention because it targets the well-developed interests of a group of students. Furthermore, this intervention could be implemented with little ownership if the instructor provides information about how science can be used to address community issues or with a great deal of ownership if the instructor tasks students with proposing community outreach activities. What combination of grain, depth, and ownership best connects with students’ existing interests is unclear, but these concepts must inform the design of personalization and Maintaining Situational Interest Problem-Based InstructionProblem-based learning is an instructional method that creates a need to solve an authentic dilemma Belland, Kim, & Hannafin, 2013; Hung, Jonassen, & Liu, 2008. From an interest theory perspective, problem-based learning provides a learning environment that can trigger and maintain situational interest. First, the problem presented to students highlights a lack of critical knowledge needed to solve the problem, which can trigger situational interest. Second, the search for answers to the problem stimulates curiosity questions—self-generated questions that can promote the development of deeper interest—while requiring students to acquire and organize new knowledge about the topic, which can promote both interest and learning Renninger & Hidi, 2016.Previous research on problem-based learning provides insights into how to create problems that promote interest. Work with Singaporean students suggests that intriguing problems why the Japanese were able to conquer Singapore during World War II despite being highly outnumbered can be effective for eliciting situational interest, but that interest may decline once students discover the answer to the problem Rotgans & Schmidt, 2014. Thus, a stimulating problem in and of itself may not be enough to promote maintained interest. In a meta-analysis, complex problems were more effective for promoting student learning than were well-structured problems Walker & Leary, 2009. Indeed, a problem climate change that increased in complexity as students learned more about potential solutions repeatedly triggered situational interest across the 15-lesson unit, rather than dropping off once a potential solution was discovered Knogler, Harackiewicz, Gegenfurtner, & Lewalter, 2015. Thus, complex problems that build on themselves and continually lead students to ask additional questions can repeatedly trigger situational interest Walker & Leary, 2009.Utility-Value Interventions Integrating Situational and Individual Interest ProcessesInterest theory suggests that another route to capturing and sustaining students’ motivation is helping students find meaning and value in their courses Harackiewicz & Hulleman, 2010. Extensive experimental and longitudinal survey studies have documented the importance of value-related beliefs, defined as perceived usefulness and relevance to the student’s identity and both short- and long-term goals Eccles, 2009; Harackiewicz, Tibbetts, Canning, & Hyde, 2014. When students perceive value in course topics, they develop greater interest, work harder, perform better, persist longer, take additional courses, and complete their degree programs Harackiewicz et al., 2008; Hulleman, Durik, Schweigert, & Harackiewicz, 2008. Students who see the value of a field of study experience greater involvement, more positive task attitudes, and greater identification with the domain Brown et al., 2015; Smith, Brown, Thoman, & Deemer, 2015.Value perceptions play a key role in another prominent theory of motivation expectancy-value theory Eccles et al., 1983. According to this theory, people choose challenging tasks—such as persisting in a college physics course—if they a value the task and b expect that they can succeed based on self-beliefs. Beliefs about the self and beliefs about the value of the task both predict interest, course choices, and major choice. Task value includes intrinsic value the enjoyment an individual experiences from performing a task, attainment value the personal importance of doing well on a task, and utility value how useful or relevant the task is for the individual’s current and future goals. Intrinsic value is of course closely aligned with situational interest, and both intrinsic and attainment values predict academic interest and persistence Eccles & Wigfield, 2002. Utility value, however, is an ideal target for interest interventions, because it is the task value most amenable to external influence Harackiewicz & Hulleman, 2010.Intervening to communicate the utility of a topic improves motivation. For example, convincing parents of the utility value of math and science for their high school–aged teens should motivate parents to talk to their teens about their courses, which would promote their teens’ interest in STEM topics, and lead them to take more elective math and science courses. Indeed, when utility-value information was communicated to parents using two brochures and a website, their teens took, on average, an extra semester of math or science in their last 2 years of high school, relative to a control group whose parents did not receive the utility-value information Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, & Hyde, 2012. A 5-year follow-up of these students found that students whose parents were in the intervention condition were also more likely to take STEM courses in college and have STEM career aspirations Rozek, Svoboda, Harackiewicz, Hulleman, & Hyde, 2016. Parents can promote interest, as well as customize utility-value information on an individual basis. Parents know their teens’ interests and can make specific, personal connections in a way that teachers, who work with multiple students, cannot Hyde et al., 2016.Instructors can, however, harness the power of deep, specific utility-value connections by asking their students to generate these connections for themselves. To do this requires revising existing course assignments, as well as infusing new opportunities into the curriculum. Utility-value interventions aim to influence students’ perceptions of value by using writing activities focused on course content a homework assignment that asks students to reflect on how what they are learning might be useful in their lives. On their own and in their own terms, students generate connections between course topics and their lives—helping them appreciate the value of their coursework and promoting a deeper level of engagement. The key is having students actively work to find the value for themselves. Indeed, self-generated utility-value connections are more powerful than externally provided utility-value information as when teachers simply tell students that material is useful in promoting interest and performance Canning & Harackiewicz, 2015. A utility-value intervention can help spark situational interest in a topic, and it may help students connect that topic to their own interests, which can build on individual efficacy of the intervention for promoting interest and performance was first demonstrated in ninth-grade science classes, with the strongest benefits for less confident students Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009; the intervention improved performance for these at-risk students by nearly two thirds of a letter grade, and enhanced their interest in science. Moreover, interest predicted students’ science-related career plans, suggesting that this simple intervention promotes important academic Special Case of Introductory Courses in Higher EducationIntroductory college courses are ripe with possibility Here, students test the waters in different fields, assess their fit, and gauge their interest in pursuing majors and careers. However, these courses also present unique challenges. For instructors, these courses are populated by large, diverse groups of students with varied levels of knowledge, interest, and motivation in the field, making it difficult to promote interest for all students. For students, introductory courses are often critical gateways to majors and careers, requiring high grades to continue in a field. Structurally, they are often large, impersonal, and overwhelming for students who may be new to the college environment. Particularly among first-year students, introductory courses may be the yardstick by which they measure their fit in college, not just in a particular field. Thus, for many students, introductory courses present high-pressure tests of their academic belonging in a particular field and college more generally, and these pressures are exacerbated for certain groups of at-risk students first-generation and underrepresented minority students who are more likely to doubt their belonging in college, become disengaged in large-lecture courses, or are the logistics of implementing an interest intervention in a large introductory class? Use of collative factors novelty, surprise, humor can grab students’ attention, but can also appear gimmicky and rub college students the wrong way. In contrast, context personalization interventions meet individual students where they are and create interest in course topics by association to their own unique personal interests. At first glance, the logistics of context personalization may not seem feasible in a large-lecture setting. As coursework moves online, however, advances in adaptive learning technologies may help college professors individualize some instructional activities. Similarly, problem-based learning strategies may be ideal for middle school or high school instruction, but are not as easily implemented in large-lecture courses. These approaches might be usefully applied in smaller laboratory sections, which allow more flexibility Freeman et al., 2014.The utility-value intervention is well suited for introductory college courses. For example, in introductory undergraduate psychology classes, using brief utility-value writing assignments promoted interest for students who were performing poorly in the class, relative to a control group that wrote summaries of course material Hulleman, Godes, Hendricks, & Harackiewicz, 2010. Indeed, the utility-value intervention is flexible, can reach students at varying levels of interest, and may even help underrepresented students connect what they are learning to their unique set of interests and values, with the potential to close persistent achievement gaps. As a case in point, a utility-value intervention implemented in a large introductory biology course with three short writing assignments during the semester was effective for all students and particularly for students who tended to struggle the most in the course first-generation underrepresented minority students Harackiewicz, Canning, Tibbetts, Priniski, & Hyde, 2015. In fact, these students, performed about half a grade point higher in the intervention condition than in the control condition. In addition, they became more engaged in the utility-value assignment, writing longer essays despite identical length requirements. The utility-value intervention is an essential tool, especially for undergraduate instructors, to impact student success with far-reaching positive Size Fits SomeNo interest intervention is one size fits all. Considering students’ pre-existing interest and level of competence for a given topic is imperative. Indeed, some interest triggers merely distract students who already have a well-developed interest in a topic, whereas these same triggers promote situational interest for students in the earlier phases of interest. For example, visually stimulating, catchy features such as adding color, varied fonts, and vivid pictures to math tasks enhanced situational interest for students who were low in individual interest, but had a negative effect for students who had more developed interest in math Durik & Harackiewicz, 2007.On the whole, utility-value interventions often improve motivation for all students Brown et al., 2015; Harackiewicz et al., 2015; Harackiewicz et al., 2012, and the benefits are often largest for the most at-risk students Harackiewicz et al., 2015; Hulleman et al., 2010. Yet, students who feel more competent sometimes benefit more from the most direct utility-value communications Durik & Harackiewicz, 2007; Durik, Shechter, Noh, Rozek, & Harackiewicz, 2015. The way that utility value is communicated also differentially impacts students in different phases of interest development. Directly communicated utility value is most beneficial for students with well-developed interests, but self-generated utility value is more effective for those who are initially low in interest Durik, Hulleman, & Harackiewicz, 2015. These nuances should inform selection of an intervention, which requires considering the specific goals of the educator, the instructional setting, and the needs of the Matters in Educational PolicyWith the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act ESSA in December 2015 Department of Education, 2015, more autonomy is granted to local and state agencies to set educational assessment standards. What is more, the ESSA prioritizes use of evidence-based educational interventions. The time is thus ripe to consider the contribution of interest theory to new and existing K-12 and higher education policies, accreditation standards, and teacher licensure requirements. Teacher preparation, incentivizing, and accountability policies each may contribute to a more engaged learning experience for our nation’s student body, as get to a place where student motivation is a valued process and outcome, policies should inform the training of our next generation of educators. National accreditation boards Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, state accrediting agencies, and teacher licensing systems might want to consider tighter alignment with lessons learned from motivational science when they set teacher preparation policies and standards. One possible policy action is the pro-active design of teacher preparation programs based on the principles of interest theory and the interventions that trigger and maintain students’ situational interest or build on their emerging and well-developed individual interests. For example, teacher preparation policy could mandate courses on how to evaluate and adopt interest interventions in curricular, co-curricular, and even extracurricular efforts Diekman, Weisgram, & Belanger, 2015. One promising route is to implement a core teacher-education course, and continuing education courses, on student interest development processes. Such a course could emphasize different types of interest-triggering structural features Durik & Harackiewicz, 2007, techniques for context personalization Walkington & Bernacki, 2014, strategies for problem-based instruction Knogler et al., 2015, procedures for optimal communication of utility-value information Brown et al., 2015; Canning & Harackiewicz, 2015, and optimal implementation of utility-value interventions Harackiewicz et al., 2015. Such a course would necessarily emphasize how interest triggers foster connections and deeper processing Walkington & Bernacki, 2014, as well as lay out the science behind how struggling and at-risk students can benefit from the different types of interest interventions Harackiewicz et al., 2014.Teacher preparation policies and practices are useful only insofar as they translate to action in the classroom, which suggests incentivizing the design and adoption of interest interventions and rewarding faculty for the downstream benefits of their efforts toward enhancing student motivation. Getting down into the weeds of creating instructional opportunities that promote and sustain students’ interest or facilitate utility-value connections is time-consuming and requires careful attention to intervention implementation details Yeager et al., 2016. Various evaluation policies could reward educators who use evidence-based motivational science to inform their curricula and instructional methods, for example, by providing professional development funds, creating organizational teaching awards, and other meritorious recognition for such policies should go beyond strict performance standards and consider multiple indicators of student success that include student interest. The next step is revising existing policies that already hold administrators and instructors accountable for student learning, and expanding those policies to include fostering interest. This could begin, for example, by mandatory inclusion of ratings of the degree of interest in, or utility of, course content in student and peer evaluations of teaching that are factored into annual faculty reviews and promotion decisions. Other options are to create policies that require faculty to outline the utility value of their course content, include interest interventions as a preferred requirement for faculty job candidates, and mandate that promotion and retention dossiers include evidence of efforts toward enhancing student motivation. Such accountability policies would set a new norm for the central role of student interest in educational system must respond to the ever-changing needs of our nation’s students. Just as the medical school curriculum was revolutionized by adding a core medical ethics course in the late 1970s Lakhan, Hamlat, McNamee, & Laird, 2009 and is now integrating coursework to help students navigate the legal and business realities of medical practice Shah, 2008, teacher-education stakeholders should consider providing future teachers with the skill set to promote and sustain students’ developing interests. Using interest theory to inform educational policy and practice is one step toward creating a future generation of students with a love for learning Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000; Renninger, Sansone, & Smith, 2004.​ Key PointsInterest is both increased attention, effort, and affect toward a particular object or topic and an enduring predisposition to reengage over these two definitions guides interventions that develop or maintain interventions include attention-getting situations, contexts evoking prior individual interest, problem-based learning, and enhancing utility interest is essential to academic preparation, incentivizing interest interventions, and accountability for interest contribute to an engaged, motivated learning thank Max Knogler, Ann Renninger, and Lynda Ransdell for helpful comments on an earlier version of this authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article The research for and writing of this article were funded by the National Institutes of Health, General Medical Sciences Grant R01GM102703, PI Harackiewicz; Grant R01GM098462, PI Smith.FootnotesAny opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institutes of of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this M. 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