This is a way to help motivate students to do the items on their To-Do list. The scope of the list (module study, course study, activities outside of college etc.) and the time-scale will be dependent on where students are in their studies. For example, at the end of the course, they may have many assessment-related tasks to do.
Students make a To-Do list of the things they need to complete.
For each thing on their list ask:
1. Why do you want to do this?
2. Why is this important to you?
This helps to find positive reasons to do boring-but-necessary things.
To embed this activity into your knowledge learning you could first ask students to make a to-do list for an imaginary person in a given scenario, e.g. an event manager just before a festival, and ask them to imagine all the tasks that would be their responsibility and justify why they had to do them.
With large groups, you can either run this as a solo activity and then put students into groups to discuss/adjust their decisions or you could have small-group discussions which contribute to a whole-group activity of generating one list.
Students are aware of the tasks they need to complete and their motivation to do so.
This TLA is from Michael Pantalon’s Influence Yourself With a “Why-Do” List: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-science-influence/201205/influenceyourself-why-do-list
