Improving Student Motivation Through Passion Projects

Consider bringing passion projects—where students choose the project focus, decide what they want to learn and create, plan out how they will achieve those goals, and work toward completion—into your classroom in an effort to increase their motivation.

Strategies to Empower Students
Grades K-12 9 min Resource by:
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A study from the Center on Education Policy at The George Washington University points out that reform efforts to achieve improved academic achievement often focus on accountability, standards and tests, teacher quality, and school management. At the same time, the report acknowledges that motivation is a key factor in student success. They write, “If students aren’t motivated, it is difficult, if not impossible, to improve their academic achievement, no matter how good the teacher, curriculum or school is.”

To improve student motivation, we need to understand what drives students to become motivated in the first place. The Center on Education Policy’s report cites numerous studies to come up with this four-part summary. They write that there are four dimensions of motivation that we need to consider:

  • Competence: Believing in one’s ability to complete the task
  • Control/autonomy: Feeling in control by seeing a direct link between the actions and outcome, and retaining autonomy by having choice in whether or how to undertake the task
  • Interest/value: Possessing interest in, or seeing the value of completing, the task
  • Relatedness: Completing the task to bring about social rewards

While there are multiple ways to interpret and address these considerations, one approach that can check off all four items on this list of dimensions of motivation is to facilitate student passion projects.

Defining Passion Projects

So first off, what is a passion project? In simple terms, a passion project is an assignment where students get to do something that they are passionate about. They get to choose the focus, decide what they want to learn and create, plan out how they will achieve those goals, and work toward completion.

Passion projects are sometimes presented as a Genius Hour or 20% Projects. The latter comes from Google’s practice of allowing employees to work on an area of personal interest and passion for a day each week, or 20% of their time. Schools have often packaged this experience into a period of time called Genius Hour, where students get an hour per week to work on a project of their choosing. Regardless of what it’s called or how it’s designed, passion projects can help to improve student motivation and, in turn, student achievement and performance.

Satisfying the Four Dimensions of Motivation

Passion projects can satisfy each of the four dimensions of motivation:

  • Competence: When students get to choose their own projects, they will likely choose something they believe they can actually accomplish. Even if they don’t know how to do everything when they start, they are generally more motivated to learn because they care about the learning, and that can lead to a feeling of self-empowerment and competence.
  • Control/autonomy: The key here is, again, that students get to choose their topic, project, and path forward. Control and autonomy are central to passion projects and arguably the biggest reason that they are motivating for students.
  • Interest/value: Since students have choice, they pick things that interest them. Because these interests have intrinsic value, they often work extra hard to complete them.
  • Relatedness: This is also important, as many students are unmotivated by grades or scores on standardized tests. Those measures often feel detached from their passions. Passion projects, on the other hand, return different types of rewards. They bring feelings of pride and self-worth when they work through challenges to complete a difficult project. Students are often quick to share their projects and success with friends and family members, which brings with it a sense of status. They are often eager to show off their work. Praise from a peer is often valued over a grade on a test.

Integration Ideas

If passion projects bring so many rewards, how can we integrate them into our school day?

There is no “one size fits all” answer to this question, but there are approaches that have worked for teachers and schools. Here are a few:

  • Makerspaces: A library media center can be a great place to build makerspaces—areas dedicated to student play, exploration, and creation—as it’s generally stocked with supplies, which can include both digital and offline resources. Students self-select the projects that they would like to pursue. This can happen during study hall, before or after school, or when students have finished classwork. It can be a nice reward to be able to go and engage in the makerspace.
  • 20% Projects: If you have some flexibility in your curriculum, you might consider dedicating a day per week to the passion project. Ideally, the projects still have connections to your content objectives.
  • Enrichment Time: Perhaps the easiest way to bring passion projects into the classroom is to allow students to work on them when they finish their assigned work early. Not only does this add motivation for finishing their work, but it’s also a great way to use this extra time in a productive manner.
  • Project Sprints: A.J. Juliani, an expert on project-based learning and one of our podcast guests, talks about the value of all students getting this type of experience. Rather than only the quick finishers or high achievers getting to pursue their passions, it’s important to allow all students this opportunity. Therefore, if you can carve out a couple of days from your schedule, you can give all students in your classroom a chance to sprint toward the completion of a passion project. The days before a major break or after state testing might be a good time to do this.

Online or Offline

Passions can be online, offline, or a mixture of both. Oftentimes, student passions involve some degree of technology integration. After all, technology is pervasive in our culture, and almost everything has some connection to tech. Technology tools also offer a vast array of opportunities for creation and imagination.

By providing a palette of technology tool options, students can choose something that inspires them. For some, it might be video production, while others might be into audio, and still others might connect with the visual arts or computer coding.

Provide students with options, and they will usually find something that inspires them. And of course, it’s important to always leave the door open for student suggestions, as it’s empowering for them to have the opportunity to bring in tools and interests from outside of school. If you can bring that passion into your classroom, it might just change student perspectives and feelings about school in general—and increase motivation in the process.

AVID Connections

This resource connects with the following components of the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework:

  • Instruction
  • Culture
  • Rigorous Academic Preparedness
  • Opportunity Knowledge
  • Student Agency
  • Insist on Rigor

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Topic Collections

This course is part of the following collections:

Empower Students Through Creativity and Choice

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