The article, '7 Strategies to Increase Student Motivation Online,' brings up some very good ideas about how to promote student involvement and motivation through online learning. With what is going on in our world today, it is essential for teachers to become more and more educated on this topic and to teach themselves about how we can become more effective teachers for the students that may be struggling online, or, even, uninterested in learning online. The seven tips were:
1. Give timely and sensitive feedback
2. Provide easy access to resources
3. Use a variety of instructional methods
4. The tutor's enthusiasm
5. Good planning and organization
6. Provide concrete and clear examples
7. Improve student autonomy
I think that these tips are all very good examples of ways to induce student motivation and learning, some of them are even good to learn for when we do return fully to in class (if that ever happens). However, one that really stood out to me because of our Instructional Technology course was (2) provide easy access to resources. Online courses do have the advantage of the availability of so many materials and resources that in class may not be able to use as easily, and we have learned about so many of them in our class (i.e., Nearpod, WeTransfer, TumbleBooks, PBS Kids, etc.). The examples in the article were Wikipedia as a starting point of learning about something, YouTube for useful educational material, Book Widgets web quest, and any personal resources. The use of these, and the ones that I previously mentioned retrieving from my classmates, are such a great and effective way of introducing the students to a different type of involvement in the classroom learning process and can motivate them to participate more. Additionally, the fourth tip, the tutor's enthusiasm, also stood out to me out of this list. Having been placed in an online classroom was a very different experience than I have ever had, and I did notice that the mood and energy coming from the teacher really contributed to what type of motivation and learning the students were going to have that day. The teacher usually had a very upbeat and excited tone with them in their lessons and just in conversation, and you could tell that each student was excited to contribute and learn about whatever she was teaching. If a teacher goes into online learning with a bad mood and low energy, the students will follow suit, and will hardly retain any information because of it.
One tip that I think could have been added to this list is to promote inquiry-based learning in the online classroom setting. This type of learning promote participation and allows the students to be a part of their own learning path by asking themselves questions and inquiring about their own personal thoughts. Rather than just listening to the teacher state facts about their knowledge and information about the concepts, the students get to directly involve themselves in their own learning; they will inquire about their initial thoughts of a topic, and can determine their own next steps about what they want to inquire about, how they will retrieve the information, and whatever conclusions they come up with. By implementing an inquiry-based classroom learning environment, the students are motivated to participate, and further their own knowledge.
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