Improving sixth-grade students perceptions of high-effort assignments by assigning more work: Interaction of additive interspersal and assignment effort on assignment choice

Sixth-grade students were exposed to two pairs of mathematics assignments. Assignment Pair A included a high-effort and a moderate-effort assignment, each containing 18 three-digit by two-digit (3×2) problems. Assignment Pair B was similar except the high-effort assignment contained six additional one-digit by one-digit (1×1) problems interspersed following every third 3×2 problem. After exposure to each pair of assignments, students ranked assignments and chose a new assignment for homework. Analysis of Assignment Pair A data showed students preferred the moderate-effort assignment. Analysis of interactions showed that interspersing the additional brief problems to the high-effort assignment caused significantly more students to choose the high-effort assignment for homework and rank it as requiring less effort and time to complete and as being less difficult than the moderate-effort assignment. Results support the hypothesis that a discrete task is a reinforcer and suggest that educators can increase the probability of students engaging in more challenging assignments that require more effort to complete by interspersing additional brief tasks. Applied and theoretical implications are discussed along with future research.