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Markers of
spring: the trees have flowered and are now sporting baby-green
leaves, the daffodils have come and gone, and some of your students
may have already started to check out.
Summer is upon
us! But not just yet. How do you keep your content delivery
interesting and your students motivated during these last few weeks
of the semester? From Edudemic, here is a short run-down of four ways to increase
engagement in the classroom. With the exception of
moving around the classroom, the other three suggestions (high
expectations, real-world applications, and technological engagement
to build connections) would work equally well in an online course.
And, if you interpret "moving around the classroom" as part
of a larger strategy of mixing up your presentation and student
participation styles, even this piece of advice becomes applicable to
the online classroom. For example, if you've always had students respond
to your discussion prompts, you might ask them to submit discussion
questions based on the week's content.
If you prefer
your information in visual form, this is a lovely infographic about
reaching distracted students. I especially like that
two of their suggestions (cooperative learning and peer instruction)
focus on the students as communicators and meaning-makers. After all,
at this point in the semester, your students should have a decent
understanding of the larger course themes and be able to work
together to situate new knowledge in that context. This could be done
in pairs, small-groups, online in threaded discussions, or in some
other format appropriate for your subject, such as a role-play or
case-study.
If nothing you've
read so far seems like it will work for your group of students, your
classroom, or your content, this is a laundry list of 21 simple ways to
motivate students. Sometimes, sharing control of and
responsibility for the learning experience can go a long way toward
keeping students interested. Giving students a choice - of which
texts to read, which prompts to answer, how to demonstrate their
skills, or with whom to work - may be just the trick. Likewise, a
clear (and clearly articulated) learning objective can help students
focus on what they need to be doing in order to succeed. Changes like
this can be made to one lesson or one activity without needing to
re-vamp your entire syllabus at this late date.
Best, if you find
that some of these strategies work for you and your students, you can
add them to your toolkit and pull them out as needed to keep
motivation high throughout the next course you teach.
We'd love to hear
from you about what you've found works well to keep students going in
these final weeks of the semester. Comment away!
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