Student response to grading incentives: evidence from college economics courses

Journal of Instructional Psychology, Sept, 2006 by Dmitriv V. Chulkov

The evidence presented above demonstrates that the design of the grading system in a course does not affect students enrolled in the course in a uniform fashion. Some groups of students are likely to respond to the grading incentive and increase their effort in reading the textbook and preparing the assignments, while others are not. Therefore, grades should not be relied upon as the sole student motivation mechanism. Alternative motivation mechanisms may be recommended for the student bodies with groups that exhibit lower response to grades.

The results of this study provide an important perspective on the debate over extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. They demonstrate that the extrinsic motivational impact of grades is stronger for certain groups of the student body, particularly for students with a related major, and for female students. Adult students may be more motivated by the intrinsic factor such as the desire to learn the course material, and not the concern for the grade. Since grades do not motivate all students equally, the effort expended in receiving the grades will vary. A different question is whether the final grade actually reflects the student's performance accurately when some students are not motivated by the grade to fully perform on the course assignments. This question, however, cannot be answered using the current dataset and remains a topic for further examination.

The author acknowledges support for this project from the Indiana University Kokomo Summer Faculty Fellowship.

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Dmitriy V. Chulkov, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Business, Indiana University Kokomo.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addresseed to Dr. Dmitriy V. Chulkov, Assistant Professor, School of Business, Indiana University Kokomo, P.O. Box 9003, 2300 S. Washington St., Kokomo, Indiana 46904; Email: dchulkov@iuk.edu