Motivate Students with the Pilot Your Purpose Exercise

July 6, 2020 Doan Winkel Comments 3 comments

Help your students unlock their purpose, and they will be motivated to learn the entire semester!

Especially in an online environment, you can more easily engage students by tapping into their intrinsic motivation. In other words, learn how to leverage students’ internal drivers and your class sessions will buzz with energy. There is nothing more internally motivating than pursuing one’s purpose. Where students’ interests intersect with their skills represents their passion. When students combine their passion with the impact they want to have on the world, that becomes their purpose. Do this at the beginning of class, and then make every interaction with your students meaningful by tying everything back to their purpose. For instance, let’s say a student loves playing video games (their interest). They enjoy learning about and getting better at playing video games, and also writing and performing slam poetry (their skills). That leads the student to imagine streaming their preferred video game while performing slam poetry about competitors (their passion). How could this student create an impact?

They could create educational video games.
They could create video games to help people empathize with people of other races and socioeconomic status.
They could raise money through being a Twitch streamer to support causes in their local community.

This purpose becomes the thread that weaves throughout your course. When they practice customer interviewing, or forecasting financial needs, or prototyping, you can link those lessons back to applying those skills to build an educational game company, or whatever they identify their purpose is. And your students stay motivated.

Your students’ purpose is the perfect hook to keep them engaged the entire semester!

Step 1: Interests

To identify their interests, students think about:

What friends say they always talk about
What they would spend time doing if money was no object
What they were learning about the last time they lost track of time watching Youtube or scrolling on social media

Our example student talks to their friends, who say they are always talking about FPS video games (particularly Call of Duty (COD)), skateboarding, and slam poetry. They think about what they would do if money was no object, and they land on playing FPS video games and skydiving (they have never been skydiving, but loves watching videos of skydiving and dreams of going one day to experience the adrenaline rush). Last, they think back to the last time they lost a couple of hours staring at their phone, and it was watching others stream COD on Twitch. Our student now has their interests mapped out, according to what their friends say, what they dream about, and what holds their attention.

Step 2: Skills

To identify their skills, students think about:

What friends say they are good at
What they would like to get better at doing
What they think they are above average at doing

Our example student again talks to their friends, who say they are good at teaching them how to play FPS video games, and at making them laugh. They think about things they do that they would like to be better at. They really love writing and performing slam poetry, but knows from their performances and comparing themself to other performers that they have a lot of room to improve. They also want to get better at playing Call of Duty. Last, they think hard about what they are really good at, and land on playing FPS video games, at mathematics (Calculus, at least), at Adobe Illustrator, and at slam poetry. Our student now has their skills mapped out, according to what their friends say, what skills they want to improve, and what they are already good at.

To see the entire Pilot Your Purpose Exercise enter your email below!

Step 3: Passion

To identify their passion, students:

Look back at their interests sheet and jot down what excites them
Look back at their skills sheet and jot down what they are interested in getting better at
Think of ways to combine interests and skills

Our example student pulls out “Getting better at streaming COD on Twitch” as the interest they are most excited about, and “slam poetry” and “Adobe Illustrator” as skills they want to improve upon. It takes them a while to think about how to combine these, but eventually lands on combining slam poetry with streaming to “being an entertaining Twitch streamer of COD who does slam poetry while streaming.”

Step 4: Impact

With a passion identified, students now turn to the impact they want to have on the world. To do that, students think about:

Groups of people they’re excited to help
Problems in their community they’re interested in solving
Global problems they’re interested in solving

Our example student has a big passion for working with and helping kids, so the groups they are excited to help are kids interested in FPS gaming, kids living in poverty, and kids suffering from depression. These are all groups our example student was a member of, so it’s easier for them to get excited about helping these groups. They next turn to problems in their local community they are interested in solving. They again thinks about kids suffering from depression, and bored kids who fall into gang life, and also animal (particularly dog) abuse. Last, they turn their focus to bigger global problems and realizes they would like to solve the problem of poverty and kids suffering from depression.

Step 5: Purpose

Students are now ready to identify their purpose:

Look back at their Passion sheet and jot down what stands out
Look back at their Impact sheet and jot down what stands out
Think of ways to combine passion and impact (which is their purpose)

Our example student looks over their Passion sheet and realizes they are interested in streaming FPS video games (particularly COD) on Twitch, but with a twist. Instead of just playing the game, they want to incorporate their love of slam poetry, to entertain their audience. They next turn to the Impact sheet and realizes they would like to help kids suffering from depression. When they think about combining their passion and their desired impact, they ramble into the idea of

Creating an FPS video game to stream that helps kids learn life coping skills by navigating life situations using creativity / creative writing.

This is our example student’s purpose, that they can weave throughout the rest of the course, as they are developing their entrepreneurial mindset and skill set. Get your copy of the Pilot Your Purpose Worksheet here!

The Pilot Your Purpose exercise is a great way to keep your students motivated all semester. You can meet with your students individually after completing this exercise & have them share their purpose so you understand what makes them tick. As you move into each module of your course, you can reference a particular student’s purpose to talk about why the particular module is relevant. For instance, when you introduce a financial module, you might reference our example student and (assuming they are a game designer) how they need to hire a project manager, programmers, 3D artist, and quality assurance specialists to complement their team, pay for servers, legal fees to protect their IP, a 3D engine license, and potentially rent for space for the team to create. As you begin each module, students will stay motivated as they see the direct application of the particular material to their purpose!

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3 thoughts on “Motivate Students with the Pilot Your Purpose Exercise”

Anna says:

February 3, 2022 at 3:23 pm

Has anyone tried out this exercise with timings? About how long do you think this would take? Also, do you think it would work with a large class (120+ students)?

1. Justin Wilcox says:
  
  February 3, 2022 at 5:00 pm
  
  Hi Anna, I’d love to hear other people’s experiences, but I’ll say from our perspective, this lesson typically takes 45 – 50 minutes.
  
  As long as all students have access to the worksheets, large classes work just fine. We’ve had instructors with 120+ students use it including an instructor with 350+ students.
  
  All the best,
  Justin
  
  1. Anna says:
    
    February 3, 2022 at 6:15 pm
    
    Thanks so much, Justin! That’s really helpful to know. Excited to try this exercise out with my students here in the UK!

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