Have you ever asked yourself “what motivates me to work as a teacher?”
Once Zoltan Dornyei said: Without sufficient motivation, even individuals with the most remarkable abilities cannot accomplish long-term goals, nor are appropriate curricula and good teaching enough to ensure student achievement on their own. If you are not motivated to learn, if you are not motivated to do anything, then it doesn`t matter if you have the best teacher, it doesn`t matter if you have the best course book, it doesn`t matter if you have the best curriculum nothing will help you. But our mission is to place high priority on methods and techniques of teaching to motivate them.
Motivation strategies can be categorized into 5 groups. Those that are related to eMpowerment, Usefulness, Success, Interest, Caring. These groups form the acronym MUSIC, which is called the MUSIC model of motivation. To motivate students instructors need to ensure that students:
Now I`ll give you some specific strategies for online teaching within each of these 5 categories.
Let`s start with success because the most important thing you can do is set clear expectations. To do this you can organize due dates for all assignments (calendar, assignments by date). Maybe using a calendar or listing them in order on one page. Another important strategy is to provide very, very clear instructions. You need to spend a lot of time making sure students understand what is expected. And it`s also vital to provide all the needed materials to complete the assignments and make easy to find through organized links, folders, etc. The second important strategy is to provide prompt feedback. Feedback needs to be specific and honest. Providing frequent assignments can help students know how they`re progressing relative to your expectations. Give some short assignments that may not be worth many points or even some practice assignments or quizzes. These strategies are consistent with the educational psychology principle that students are motivated when they believe they can succeed if they put forth effort.
Next, let`s consider the group of Usefulness strategies. One of them is to explain the purpose of all assignments. Think about how is it useful to students` lives now or in the future and make connections to the “real-world”, so that they see the practical applications. Students are motivated when they understand why what they`re learning is useful to their goals.
Now let`s look at the Interest strategies. One strategy is to select interesting materials and activities. This strategy might seem obvious but it actually takes some effort to achieve. To do so consider these questions: 1. Does the text read like an encyclopedia? 2. Are there other materials with similar content that are more visually/aurally appealing? 3. What`s new and exciting about the material? 4. What are the controversies in the field/topic? Have you used those to effectively generate interest? (yes /no)
Other strategies are useful to avoid boring the students. A common way to do this is to:
Let`s have a look at strategies. One strategy is to provide frequent communication between the students and between you and the students. I found that students perceive instructors to be caring when you email them often, you can
Moving on, I`d like to present another strategy – to be Respectful. It may seem obvious but it`s not uncommon for instructors to be patronizing or demeaning to students. Caring involves really hearing, seeing, and feeling what students are trying to convey. Therefore you need
to be respectful in all of your communications with students and if your course involves a lot of student to student interactions
you also need to set guidelines to ensure that students are respectful of one other. Students are motivated when they believe that their teacher (and others) in the learning environment care about their learning and them as a person.
With all these strategies in place you should be well on your way to motivating.
However, another strategy that good instructors use is to give students empowerment by allowing them to make some decisions. The primary decision here is to provide students with some choices. You can give choices within assignments by giving them different options or to give them choices as to which assignment to complete, or can give choices related to the format of assignment. (video, paper, etc.) Another strategy is to provide reasonable due dates. For example, instead of giving one assignment on Tuesday and one on Thursday make both assignments due on Thursday, to give students more control of when they want to study then, they can better fit the assignment into their schedule. Students are motivated when they have control over their learning environment.
You can be the most motivated learner in the world, but if something distracts you and you disengage, you`re off. If there is no engagement, there is no learning. The challenge is not how do we motivate students, but how do we manage their attention. It`s high time we moved to them..
What do we usually ask our students at the beginning of lessons, sure, how are you? And what do they answer? I am fine/ I am ok/ Good/ I am happy etc. The thing that I do to make this question more enchanting is that I use “The feel wheel”. With this they can use another words and expand their vocabulary. Take a look at the “Feel Wheel”, I might feel happy and I am going to look at the yellow part. Actually, I feel a little playful today. If you have a word, you would like to share about how you feel today, please feel free to share.
Another, not less interesting icebreaker is “Good things”. I`ve discovered recently this activity, may be for some of you it`s already familiar, but still I find it really engaging. Students roll the dice, one after another. If you roll 1= you give a personal success, 2= something you`re grateful for 3= cool thing you`ve learned 4= something that gave you joy 5= something you did for someone else 6= the way you spent your week end, and it`s not the exhaustive list.
Find the mistake/ find the odd word. You can organize this using the materials of the previous lessons, like words, grammar in groups, in pairs with the help of breakout rooms. It`s a good way for reviewing them. Or I usually use videos without words which are named as “Timelapse videos”, it`s absolutely free and you can find it on YouTube, they`re short videos without words with different topics, Timelapse (cities, food, holidays). Of course, then we discuss a little bit what they saw.