Expectancy Theory

My plan is most effective when implemented with the expectancy theory. In order to motivate the class to learn the course material, it would be beneficial to provide the students with an opportunity to apply the principles they have been learning (to foster a more thorough understanding of organizational behavior concepts). One way to accomplish this is to assign the students to interview someone from an actual organization so they can see exactly how these concepts work within an organization. The employer or employee being interviewed will be asked a list of organizational behavior-related questions that were carefully prepared by the student. The student will seek answers that help to clarify many of the concepts learned from class, in addition to clarifying how those concepts work within the interviewee’s organization. After taking meticulous notes, the student will then write a brief two page paper (worth 2% of the final grade) describing his or her experience as the interviewer and what was learned.

In order to bring the expectancy theory into this process, the teacher might offer a desirable reward or incentive on completion of a successful paper. This reward could include an extra credit opportunity since extra credit is always a very desirable reward for students. One of the goals of this class is to learn the organizational behavior principles and be able to see how they work within organizations. The extra credit reward would contribute to the student’s motivation and effort to learn these concepts, which in turn would contribute to their overall performance, which would then ultimately contribute to the accomplishment of the goal that students understand how these concepts work in real life and within real organizations.