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:

• connect the material to students' interests
• show students the relevance of your course to their other academic pursuits as well as their future professional lives
• share your own enthusiasm and passion about the subject
• give students authentic, real-world tasks to facilitate and assess their learning (for examples of U-M faculty discussing their use of such assignments, see these videos of Melanie Yergeau from English and Scott Moore from Business)

To facilitate students' expectation of success, it's important to clearly communicate your goals and standards, grade fairly, and provide targeted feedback. Allowing students choice and flexibility in paper topics, deadlines, or class discussion questions can also contribute to their expectations of success by enhancing their sense of control over their learning. (For an example of a U-M faculty member using a 'gamification' approach to give students more choices in their learning, see this feature on Mika LaVaque-Manty's Political Science course.) Students who clearly understand why it's worthwhile to learn your course material and can track their own progress toward mastery are more likely to end the semester saying, "She was a great teacher! She really motivated me to learn."

If you want to learn more about how to integrate these motivational strategies into your specific courses, you can request a consultation with a member of the CRLT staff. For additional resources related to student motivation, click on this page.

_{Adapted from Ambrose, Susan A., Michael W. Brdiges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha Lovett, and Marie K. Norman, How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010.}