While we’ve found ways to motivate learners in the classroom, it may feel like a daunting task in the online environment. Here are a few of the essentials for motivating students, along with strategies to mix them into your online classroom.
1. An engaged instructor who participates in the course regularly and shows excitement for the topic. Instructor-student engagement leads to students’ higher perceived learning outcomes, which is a major player in motivation. As you show students that you care about their learning, they are more likely to care too.To facilitate this online, you can:
- Participate regularly in discussion board threads.
- Provide quick, detailed feedback to students’ work.
- Host office hours regularly to engage with students.
- Be readily available via various communication methods.
2. An open environment that encourages participation and a sense of belonging. Student-to-student interaction is crucial in order for social learning to occur.
To encourage your students to participate and communicate in an online course, you can:
- Use discussion tools regularly with guiding questions that encourage conversation.
- Enable virtual collaboration rooms where students can meet.
- Utilize EdTech Tools such as VoiceThread to facilitate discussions as students review learning materials.
- Encourage participation regularly and emphasize that each student plays an important role within your class.
3. Regular goal-setting and strategizing opportunities that include counsel from the instructor. This is especially effective for under-performing students who may be struggling in your course. Regardless of the method, follow-up is essential.
To offer this online, you can:
- Utilize Blackboard’s Retention Center to monitor students’ progress.
- Hold one-on-one goal setting and check-in sessions with your students.
- Create a goal-setting assignment and provide constructive feedback to guide students.
4. The freedom to access lessons from anywhere and manage learning time. This essential ingredient is unique to online learning, so it’s important to use it to our advantage when motivating students.
To offer this freedom, you can:
- Offer asynchronous learning activities such as short pre-recorded lectures, video quizzes, podcasts, and asynchronous discussion opportunities.
- Enhance social learning with Edtech Tools such as Padlet, FlipGrid, Perusall, the possibilities are endless.
- Develop a mobile-friendly classroom by avoiding attachments that students must download to view. Instead, build your content within Blackboard or other tools.
5. Empowering students with opportunities to choose and guide their own learning. This can vary in complexity, but the key is to offer students autonomy and control over their learning experience.
To do this, you can:
- Ask for student feedback regularly (and implement when possible) – this can be as simple as asking for the “positives” and “negatives” of the course each week in a survey.
- Offer options for learning material based on learning style – this is a strength of online learning since we can embed videos or articles.
- Provide specific content based on students’ interests.
- Give options for how students can complete practical assessments.
While the essential ingredients for motivation remain the same regardless of setting, by thinking outside of the physical classroom, we can discover new ways of motivating our students in an online experience.
For additional tips and tools, you can contact the Distance Learning Institute.
Hanna Fife is an instructional designer and online instructor with the Distance Learning Institute whose goal is to create positive and memorable online learning experiences for both students and instructors.
