Motivation

Motivating Students to Learn

As we return from spring break to the normal demands of the semester, it's a great time to think about student motivation. How effectively are your courses engaging your students and motivating them to learn? 

While it can sometimes feel that students simply choose to be engaged or apathetic for their own reasons, the research on motivation clearly indicates that instructor choices significantly affect students' investment in learning. And motivation plays a key role in how effectively students master course material. As Susan Ambrose and her co-authors argue in How Learning Works (Jossey-Bass, 2010), research shows that people are motivated to learn when they:

  1. See the value, either intrinsic or extrinsic, of learning the particular material or skills, and
  2. Believe they can succeed.

What teaching strategies do these motivational factors suggest? To help students appreciate the value of the learning goals in your course, you can: Read more »

Submitted by tbraun on Fri, 03/15/2013 - 9:03am
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Teaching Strategies: Motivating Students

Instructors who understand student motivation can greatly enhance the classroom experience and student performance. The articles and links in this section discuss research findings on student motivation and techniques for motivating students.

Teaching FAQs: Motivating Students
Fifteen tips on motivating students from the Teaching Effectiveness Program at the University of Oregon.

IDEA Paper #40: Getting Students to Read: Fourteen Tips (IDEA Center. Hobson, 2004)
Strategies for motivating students to read course materials; includes Bean’s Student Reading Problem/Solution List as an appendix.

IDEA Paper #41: Student Goal Orientation, Motivation, and Learning (IDEA Center, Svinicki, 2005)
Teachers can affect student motivation in ways that either facilitate or impede learning. This paper describes why this is so, and offers specific suggestions for promoting positive student motivation. Read more »

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