Building student’s capacity to persevere (aka: GRIT)

While grading student project submissions I had an NPR’s HIDDEN BRAIN podcast on GRIT playing in the background.  The main speaker was a psychologist Angela Duckworth, who studies how people react when confronted with challenging situations.  Do they persevere when presented with a challenge or do they give up?

Since I was grading the work that students submitted I started to look at how much effort each student put into his/her project.  It was clear in the final product, what students struggled and pushed forward and what students put in the minimal effort and gave up as the project became more difficult.

A quick Google Search revealed this article in Edutopia.org  After a quick review a thought occurred to me, “Can I build grit into my students?”  The article included a GRIT Scale  for evaluating the level of GRIT for that person.

I started completing the scale myself and learned I have some GRIT in me.  I think I got it from my father who started his own business, and got a patent for one of his inventions.  I know he struggled but pushed though.  The part that I want to pass on to my students is how to build GRIT.  During my daily search of TED talks I discovered Angela presenting on GRIT.

So… how did I build GRIT in a graduate course on e-Learning Development