Student Motivation in Distance Learning
Student Motivation in Distance Learning
Is student motivation in learning important?
Researchers, Huang and Wang (2022) concluded through their research that, "the effect of relatedness satisfaction on students’ academic achievement was completely mediated by the extent to which they emotionally and behaviourally engaged in online learning activities" (para. Conclusion 4). Furthermore, they state, "effectively motivating and engaging students in the online classroom is critical to the quality and effectiveness of online education (Chen & Jang, 2010; Ferrer et al., 2020, as cited by Huang and Wang, 2022, para. 2). Simply put, the more engaged students are throughout a course, the higher their success and academic achievement tends to be.
As an educator, keeping students engaged and motivated to learn is one of the biggest priorities and challenges. All students are motivated differently. In traditional face-to-face teaching, it is easy to see if a student is not engaged and motivated because they are most likely not paying attention during instruction-- they are playing with a pencil, looking around, daydreaming, or putting their head down. In online distance education, it is much harder to detect when students are not engaged or motivated. Too often, it is detected when it is too late —when a student misses an assignment due date or an assignment is turned in that contains many misconceptions. How do distance educators ensure students are motivated before assignment completion?
Increasing Student Motivation
Keeping students engaged throughout the course requires intentional effort from the teacher. Simonson and Zvacek, researchers, recently concluded four things an educator can embed into their online class to maintain student motivation:
- Relevance: Students are more apt to care about the content they are engaging with if it has relevance to them. "Consider ways to tie course discussions and assignments to local or regional happenings, events of interest to students, or long-term professional goals" (Simonson & Zvacek, 2024, p. 193)
- Presence: Students need to be able to 'see' their educator throughout the duration of the course. This could be done through video meetings or pre-recorded instructional videos. Not only should educators create opportunities for themselves to be seen, but they should also provide ways for students to communicate with each other. After all, "ask any child what they like best about school and the answer is likely to be, 'I get to see my friends'" (Simonson & Zvacek, 2024, p. 193).
- Perseverance: Educators should share stories of their own perseverance to encourage their students to continue to persevere in their own academic courses. "Teachers can share stories of how they ovvercame difficulties or persisted when they felt like quitting to remind students that success is more about effort than talent" (Simonson & Zvacek, 2024, p. 193).
- Communication: Students are more likely to be engaged when they feel connected to the educator. One way to connect with students is by communicating with students individually. This can be accomplished by emailing students individually, addressing the student by name and checking in, or providing feedback about the course.
Print this infographic (which contains the information above) to keep as a quick reference sheet to help keep your students engaged.
Motivating Students by Meredith BarkerIf you want to dive even deeper into keeping your students engaged, watch the video below for more ideas!
References:
Huang, Y., & Wang, S. (2022). How to motivate student engagement in emergency online learning? Evidence from the COVID-19 situation. Higher Education, 85(5), 1101–1123. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00880-2
Simonson, M., & Zvacek, S. (2024). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (8th ed.). Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Motivation is absolutely essential for student achievement. Some students may be motivated by grades, others by a desire for learning, and some others may be looking for a career change or pay raise. Whatever the reason, students need to feel motivated to learn in order to achieve the most out of distance learning. "Motivation is a powerful factor in explaining learner performance in distance education. That is, in most cases, it is the person's motivation that evokes the action of learning (Zhou, 2022, p. 1030). Keeping students motivated during online learning can be tricky. Face-to-face learning has the benefit of nuanced discussion and teachable moments. Questions can be quickly and directly addressed. Therefore, in order to give some opportunities for organic discussion, it is helpful to include opportunities for communication between students and the teacher. "For asynchronous teaching, it is helpful to build in activities in which students can see the teacher and each other, even if only pre-recorded video clips" (Simonson & Zvacek, 2024, p. 193).
ReplyDeleteReferences
Simpson, S. & Zvacek, J. (2024). Teaching and learning at a distance Foundations of distance
education (8th Ed.). Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Zhou, M. (2022). Students' motivation in distance learning: How it would be affected and
why it matters. Proceedings of the 2022 5th International Conference on Humanities Education
and Social Sciences.