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.
Capturing and Directing the Motivation to Learn (1998)
http://ctl.stanford.edu/Newsletter/motivation_to_learn.pdf
Overview of literature on student motivation and tips for incorporating methods of motivation into courses and connecting with students’ desire to succeed
Motivating
Students' Best Work
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/compendium/sectionlists/sect20.html
List of 14 methods to motivate college students by identifying the knowledge/skills students bring, providing students the skills/knowledge to succeed in class, and developing positive instructor-student relationships
Tools for Teaching: Motivating Students
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/motivate.html
Ideas for motivating students through course design, feedback, and reading assignments, compiled from the hard copy book Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis (1993).
Teaching FAQs: Motivating Students
http://tep.uoregon.edu/resources/faqs/motivatingstudents/motivating.html
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)
http://www.theideacenter.org/sites/default/files/Idea_Paper_40.pdf
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)
http://www.theideacenter.org/sites/default/files/Idea_Paper_41.pdf
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.