In class, I stress that students must be self-motivators. It is up to them to get the work done. I don't grade homework problems, so it is completely their decision to do the problem sets each week. About 70% of my students routinely do the homework. (It doesn't hurt that there is a direct correlation between homework completion and high quiz grades.)
At LargeU, when students did poorly on a quiz or exam, they tended to blame the examiner (ME). Here at TempCollege, such students are the exception. Students mostly just get angry with themselves. They recognize that they can only blame themselves for a poor performance. They come to my office hours to go back over botched problems or ask for a list of tutors.
This weekend I even had emails from students APOLOGIZING to me for their most recent quiz performances. If I can get them to move from apologizing for a bad quiz to performing well on the next quiz, I think that I will be able to mark this as a very successful week!
