Easy Ways to Implement Engagement Principles in Online Learning
Concurrent Session 8
Brief Abstract
Post Covid, students’ motivations continue to decline as do their expectations to succeed. Students need intrinsic motivation to do the difficult work of learning. Students need courses that are relevant, meaningful, & applicable to life. I teach the integration of research-based motivation principles, through instructional design, giving students autonomy, competence, and belonging.
Extended Abstract
Session Title: Easy Ways to Implement Engagement Principles in Online Learning
Post covid, students’ motivation to learn has drastically declined, as have their expectations to be successful in school. Students have shouldered emotional isolation, stress, family losses, and financial hardships in the past several years, not to mention the changes in schooling structure and expectations. As educators, we are now tasked with motivating students again, helping them regain their intrinsic interests and dedication to school. They need skills and motivation to become engaged learners. Never has there been a time that is more crucial for students to be rejuvenated to learn. Many students are extremely intelligent, but lack the motivation to be successful in school. In your educational experience, how many of your students love learning as much as they love cookies? Have you had students who have an abundance of learning potential, but who fall short when it comes to having the motivation and the attention span necessary to do the difficult work that learning requires? Learning is hard work. Lifelong learned takes a combination of extrinsic as well as intrinsic motivation and our schools are lacking in the intrinsic motivators students of all ages need to be successful.
For decades, I have worked to help motivate the unmotivated learner, the struggling reader, the students who lack the skills they need to be successful. I have taught teachers how to engage their students and spark their interests and capitalize on their strengths. Now more than ever, we need to teach our students how to learn how to learn. We must go back and remind students what expert readers do and what engaged learners do and how to be successful in school. We must go beyond just the curriculum, adding a layer of research-based principles that truly motivate and engage students in that curriculum, but also gives students more control over their own learning. Engaging learners is what education is about: Yeats said it the best, “Education not the filling of a pail, it’s the lighting of a fire.” Technology and software can provide interactivity for students in online learning environments, but this is not the deep engagement that is sufficient for lifelong learning. Student in both brick- and-mortar classrooms, online classrooms, as well as asynchronous learning environments can benefit from research-based motivation principles that are layered into the curriculum. The motivational principles are free, easy to implement, and yet the payoff is huge because they provide students with autonomy, build their competence, strategies, and skills, and give them an important sense of belonging, which is so lacking these days. The sense of belonging, even with asynchronous learning, can help students feel like they are part of something bigger, reducing the isolation that the past couple of years has had on students.
This session will cover how Brigham Young University-Online High School has worked to develop model courses designed to integrate not only solid content learning, but also implements research-based engagement principles into all of our courses. I will share how we have developed this engagement model that seamlessly provides engagement principles to build autonomy, competence, and belonging into synchronous and asynchronous online learning courses of any content area. During my session I will spend the first half presenting these motivational principles in a variety of course content areas. I will provide several examples of what these principles are and how we have integrated them into all of our courses to create consistency. Attendees will then engage with colleagues of similar content areas to discuss these engagement principles presented. During this portion, I will be engaging with groups allowing for time to ask questions. Remaining time will then be provided to practice the implementation of these engagement principles into their own content or course designs. My goal for the session is that each attendee will recognize the empowering impact engagement and motivational principles can have on all students. Attendees will then be able to easily layer their curriculum designs with these principles to help develop more engaged learners and lifelong learning among their students.