The best approach to student motivation is linked to inner drive and personal ambitions. Regardless of whether you are a teacher, entrepreneur or motivational speaker, the question to be asked is: as a consequence of deep engagement with the subject matter at hand, how can I help each of my students feel more connected to themselves as learners, as well as more personally invested in the world in which they live? Several factors that remain true for efficient traditional formats of education also extend to online formats of learning. Motivational strategies for the virtual classroom are quite similar to those for a physical classroom. For instance, a low student-teacher ratio, regardless of format – in-person or online – is essential for better student success. 
Nevertheless, online instructors may adopt a few specific methods that will maximize the motivation, learning and subsequent retention of adult students. For effective student motivation, provide opportunities for students to connect personally to the subject matter. Let students set their own goals. Establish a system for self-monitoring and tracking progress. Provide encouragement to students for collaboration with you on the syllabus or course material. Take up the role of the facilitator of information rather than the transmitter for motivating students.
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Why is student motivation necessary?
The main reasons why students quit online courses include a sense of loneliness, discontent, and disconnection. The general lack of contact with the faculty, participation of teachers and social interaction also contribute immensely to this. A sense of community, promoting participation, contact with other students, and teamwork are all factors leading to the success of the student. This is why student motivation becomes essential, especially in virtual space. Elements like eLearning tools personally tailored learning environments, and mobile applications also help the topic feel more relevant and applicable to the daily lives of the students.
Did you know? When eLearning is more application-based and practical, student motivation to learn will be higher.
Effective student motivation strategies
When you wonder how to motivate students online, following these strategies could help.
1. Address your students appropriately
While sending personalized emails and feedback, always address the students by name. Your student glances at a computer screen, see a course layout, recognizes that there are many other students in the course, has class materials and skims through your profile. But, there is still no bond between you and the student to help create a connection between you two. This is a connection that is essential to cultivating the motivation of that student. One quick and secure way to do this is to always address the student by name any time you submit any individualized materials to him or her. The student knows that you are talking to him or her and not the rest of the class. We all want to feel wanted, and this is particularly true in an online environment. It is highly recommended that you respond to any student’s queries within 24 hours.
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2. Provide effective and sensitive feedback immediately
Feedback is important to the online learning process. The teacher has several opportunities to provide feedback in real-time as the instructional process takes place in a classroom. This helps in streamlining students and finding their mistakes early on. Postponed feedback could result in the sense of isolation of the students when the studies take place on a distance basis. It may even cause some serious deviations from the course.
Technology is very helpful to tutors in the 21st century, and you can use some programs to provide sensitive feedback when your students need it –
- Express verbal feedback with students through a simple audio podcast powered by Vocaroo.
- Offer video feedback using Jing’s support with screen captions.
- Coordinate video conferences on platforms like Zoom to focus on important issues and provide virtual feedback sessions.
- Develop activities with tools that have built-in feedback, like BookWidgets.
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3. Offer easy access to resources
Online courses have a clear benefit in the variety and quality of applicable instructional materials on the Internet. Thus, your challenge as a tutor is to provide assistance on further reading and studying by giving links to resources that are free and easily accessible. In such a way, you will ensure that your students always have access to them and can get all the information they need at any time.
This is easily accomplished by linking to –
- Wikipedia as the place to begin learning something.
- YouTube channels with interesting educational content.
- A Webquest of BookWidgets with online widgets (or exercises), links to web pages, video materials and more. Even Wikipedia pages and YouTube videos can be embedded!
Ensure that your personal resources have been carefully prepared and uploaded to the course website available to your students.
Tip: Use Google Drive to collate your resources in one place.
However, always make sure that you guide students to materials that are copyright-free or that are officially circulated on the Web with their owner’s consent. Too much content is falsely sold on the Internet, and it could be an academically unethical practice to use such materials.
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4. Use different instructional methods
Students are not universal. A few students are better at perceiving knowledge in visual form, while others are auditory personalities. Students have varied cognitive styles, and the real-life classroom gives students of all kinds a wealth of educational opportunities. But, some components may be missing in online learning, leaving a few students far beyond the scope of effective study. Thus, it is a tutor’s duty to ensure that his / her course materials contain visual, audial, and textual formats to give all students a fair chance of understanding.
In practice, this variety can be achieved by enriching each lesson with –
- Text details in the lesson.
- A video which explains and illustrates key points.
- A panel discussion or live student session.
- A core material PowerPoint presentation.
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5. Show enthusiasm
Perhaps, this one is a cliché but it is a well-known reality: only motivated tutors can motivate students. Even the most inspired and driven learners lose interest in education in the event that they do not see the same enthusiasm in their teacher. So, it is the tutor’s critical position to function as a leading example of passion for the subject. Before you venture into the technical solutions to the question of how to motivate students online, you must cultivate enthusiasm yourself. Make compelling lectures, plan emotional and engaging discussions, and relate the course material to real-life frequently. You will then see that even the struggling learners follow the course with dedication and resilience. This is certainly going to be a rewarding experience! For example, you can use memes in your lectures, or give students different options.
6. Make learning fun and productive
When you come across jokes, anecdotes, and cartoons associated with your course material, sprinkle them throughout the course length. This is meant to do one thing: give your students a little bit of a chuckle. This allows for a much more casual and open-minded and sometimes fun-learning environment. Also, occasionally scattering such elements in the course also humanizes you a little more. This is something that is essential to anyone who teaches online.
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Give a “casting call” for all the topic-related websites, big and small. Ask your students to give you X number of websites relevant to a specific aspect of writing. They can locate websites about that writing from other colleges or find general websites based on enhancing one’s writing. These could then be transformed into a master list, then distributed to all students. They will really appreciate this group effort because it gives them additional resources to help write their assignments and learn more. Attempt this with your students; the number of successful websites discovered will surprise both them and you.
7. Challenge your students
Give a challenge or puzzle to your students that involves the course content. This could be something that you have found from a different source (colleague, book, Internet, and so on) or that something that you are developing. Whatever you choose, it must force your students to take up a subject that was not initially related to them, at least not in a personal sense. They should make use of their own skills, interests, and experience to solve the puzzle or meet the challenge. Such an activity will be fun and keep them motivated if done before a new topic is taught.
8. Stay well-planned and organized
A real-life classroom provides some orchestration because of the many kinds of activities that groups are able to carry out. Clear preparation and organization, however, are the key to successful learning and student engagement in the online environment. It is extremely doubtful that students will be satisfied and pleased with a course in which the teacher is tuning the microphone for 10 minutes or offers links to homework that do not work. Planning is therefore vital in both technical and educational terms, in order to make the learning process seamless and to satisfy the students. An effective way to guarantee that your online lessons are structured flawlessly and engaging is to focus on modern technology for lesson design.
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9. Provide relevant and clear examples
Even highly theoretical knowledge fields can be linked to specific real-life situations which give study ultimate meaning. Research indicates that online students need to feel that they have the potential to excel (i.e., have competence). They also have to feel that their education is important to their personal or professional development goals if they are to remain motivated. Through providing clear examples and connecting theory to reality, teachers ensure that their course is comprehensible. This can have a positive effect on motivation in the long term.
10. Enhance student autonomy
Finally, remaining true to the core of online learning, which is often called self-directed learning, is essential. This is one of the primary components of student motivation. Learners only excel in the online educational space if they are able to take charge of their educational process, and the role of the teacher is to support them.
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In the following ways, you can improve student autonomy –
- Create the assignment calendar and the timeline of materials to be studied for the course (for students to flexibly schedule their work on the course materials without having to provide a piece of data each week).
- Involve students into independent goal-setting to take full control of the process at the beginning of the course.
- Present new educational scenarios and situations to students, and thus, teach them to make independent decisions.
Did you know? Extrinsic rewards and consequences can hinder student motivation for challenging tasks which require creativity and persistence.
How to motivate high school students?
As an educator that teaches young adults, it is essential to know how to motivate high school students. Whether online or face-to-face, high school students are more inspired to learn when they are viewed as special individuals with their own goals, interests, and lives. When they realize that you are in their corner – in the role of a coach, say, instead of a tyrant or micromanager – they will feel more at ease contributing to class interactions. This will be a boost to motivational teaching. The ultimate aim is to improve the intrinsic motivation levels of students while reducing reliance on extrinsic motivation outlets. This is done in order to help ensure that they are not relying on you for their learning.
Since online learners are often in the non-traditional learning mode, applying a few commonly known leadership and management strategies to your online teaching approach might be helpful for motivating students. You must resist the urge to dominate, and instead opt for motivation. Practice your listening skills and hold students accountable for efficient motivational teaching.
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Given below are a few specific motivational strategies for a virtual classroom for high school students –
1. Blend current happenings to subject learning
One of the most successful motivational strategies in the classroom online is to connect the “real world” to the subject in question. It can mean something as simple as starting each day with an online class discussion that relates some important news to the lesson being taught. Alternatively, you may want to engage the students in role-playing. This can be done by making students apply current reading concepts to future jobs or hypothetical scenarios.
2. Dialogue interaction
Dialogue interaction is shown to be a beneficial aspect of motivating students to learn. This is because the act of communicating with others in dialectics strengthens concepts. It allows students to solidify and expand on key concepts from the subject matter or reading content. All of these activities could be performed through student discussion in online chat rooms. As one of the most effective motivational strategies in the classroom online, it ensures engagement with the subject material and with each other is important.
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3. Self-monitoring
Having them monitor their own progress and learning experiences is another way of motivating students to learn. One strategy is the portfolio process in which students collate all their work into a single folder or binder so they can track their own progress from the first paper to the last. A physical archive would be especially helpful for online learners. This is because it is very easy to feel as if all evidence of learning and understanding of subject matter is being confined to the digital domain. In addition, after completing each assignment, ask the students to reflect on the learning process. Doing so will help you as an education teach motivation better.
Pedagogic design to enhance student motivation
To teach motivation to students in the virtual space, following the given pedagogic design can be of great advantage.
- Do not restrict the web pages of your course to blocks of complex text and sparse images. There are several ways to build your course pages with an engaging interface. Use imaging, video, audio, music and interactive features. Collaborate with an instructional designer to create those features, if possible.
- Utilize videos to explain course material.
- Use web-based, real-time data.
- Have your students take on a geoscientist’s role in virtual research activities, patterned according to major geoscience research projects, real-time data or online sources.
- Case studies may involve role-playing, using maps and data sets. They could also include opportunities to synthesize different materials around a central topic.
- Ask for input from the students on class subject matters and assignments.
- In some situations, the use of “gateway” assignments that students must complete before proceeding in the course can be effective.
- Adopt educational approaches that focus on guiding students to explore information and relationships of their own.
- Utilize discussion boards to create a sense of community and encourage active engagement with the subjects of the course.
- Build current course topics and readings. If the syllabus is already fixed, try to incorporate recent happenings around the world into your course content.
- Setting up peer groups is a good way to boost student motivation. Extrinsically motivated learners are encouraged by achievement in relation to their peers. Intrinsically motivated students can interact with peer groups to gain further insight. Both kinds of students benefit from working in peer groups.
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Reaching out to ill-motivated students
Do not hesitate to reach out to students with an issue of motivation. You may find students who have real problems with involving themselves in your course. The reasons could vary from anxiety overtaking an online course to a personal issue, not having the material for the course to feeling under-prepared. There are many issues that need personal attention from the tutor. The students will drop you a line about this most of the time, so be sure to respond instantly. But, if the student does not write to you, start the conversation. Knowing you are sincerely worried can go a long way in raising the motivational level of that student. Telephone calls are helpful but it would be better for you to document your correspondence with a student.
Take proactive steps to improve student motivation starting today!
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FAQs on student motivation
1. How can I motivate students in online classes?
A: You can motivate your students in online classes by giving instant feedback, making interesting course content, creating an engaging environment, and understanding each student’s learning needs.
2. What must be done if a student looks unengaged in my online class?
A: If a student looks engaged in your online class, pause your teaching for a while and conduct an activity that is related to the subject matter. This could include showing videos, asking for examples, sharing personal experiences, and the like.
3. How can tutors help learners overcome learning barriers in the online environment?
A: Tutors can help learners overcome learning barriers in the online environment by linking theory to reality, providing accessible study resources, and enabling student autonomy.
4. How can I improve student success in my online classroom?
A: To improve student success in an online classroom, enable live sessions where the participants can see you and converse with you in real time. This will eliminate distance learning barriers and increase student participation.
5. How can a course be prepared for an online classroom?
A: Courses for an online classroom must be prepared keeping in mind the cognitive abilities of your students. Pack your course content with visual, auditory, and fun elements apart from lectures. Incorporate peer learning as well.
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