Motivating Students to Work Between Classes
I have previously blogged about the value of using a variety of activities during scheduled online teaching time and the idea of moving away from lecturing online into online teaching. However, for many university teachers, this creates a concern over how the students will get the knowledge they need to progress through the module. There may be an attitude of, ‘If I don’t tell them, how will they know?’, though that may be too simplistic a take on the problem. I believe the concern is more, ‘If I don’t tell them, and they don’t do any work between classes, then how are they going to learn?’ We may worry that our students are not motivated or hard-working enough to carry out reading or practice between this class and the next. Therefore, the thinking goes, it is better that I tell them everything they need to know so that I can be sure they have at least been exposed to the knowledge they need.
Where that falls flat is that students don’t learn through what we tell them, they learn through what they do. If we don’t expect them to do anything during the scheduled classes AND we don’t expect them to work between classes then, I would argue, we are doubly failing them. BUT, most of us will have experienced asking students to carry out reading in preparation for a lesson, only to discover that most of them haven’t done it, making the planned learning activities hard to carry out. What can be done to motivate students to carry out the work between classes?
What happens online?
When planning fully online distance learning programmes – of the kind that are intended as DL, whether there’s a pandemic or not! – the starting point is usually structured asynchronous learning activities. The students are globally distributed and could be on any time zone in the world, so it is hard to depend on live, synchronous teaching events as the core of the learning experience. Instead, we plan and instruct the students on a series of learning activities in which they engage with content through short videos, readings and research, and then take part in discussions, carry out practice tasks, solve problems, investigate cases, etc., before providing evidence of their learning through formative tasks and eventually their summative assessments.
In other words, the students only learn through what they do. It’s structured, planned and sequenced in order for the students to achieve the learning outcomes – that’s what the teacher brings to the table as the subject matter expert – but there are no long lectures. And it works.
Set very clear expectations
Students very quickly recognise and respond to the expectations of their teachers. If we set an expectation early on that there is no required work to carry out between classes, then students will not carry out work between classes.
Oppositely, if we set a weekly expectation that the students will need to be prepared for our classes and we go into the teaching and learning activities with an assumption that work has been carried out, then students quickly learn that they need to be prepared. A positive place to start, and one that is true, is to make the assumption that our students want to learn, they want to progress, and they want to be able to keep up with the classes. By making clear the work you expect the students to carry out and showing in your teaching that you expect that to be complete when you start the next lesson, your students will recognise, learn and respond appropriately.
Make meaningful progress week on week
Each class needs to progress from the previous one. Similarly, every class should also progress from the learning students will gain through their own independent work. If teaching begins by explaining what the students have read, researched on or practised, then many students will realise that they don’t need to do the work for themselves. If we make meaningful progress each week, building and developing with the assumption that students have carried out their preparatory work, then students will recognise the need to be up to speed, or see the risk of being left behind and having to work harder to catch up.
Provide opportunities for questions and clarification
One danger in this approach is that students who do the work, but struggle with it, or flat out don’t understand, don’t get the opportunity for clarification, and get left behind, despite their efforts to keep up. This is why it is so important to plan for learning activity (as discussed in this blog post) that gives your students opportunities to ask questions, discuss with their classmates and come to you for clarification on the bits they don’t understand).
Be explicit about what you want students to do and why
If you want to motivate your students to carry out work between classes, then let them know why you want them to do it.
I’m a big proponent of instructional narrative – telling your students, verbally in class, and in writing in the VLE, what you want them to do and why. It is easier for students to be motivated to carry out required learning activities if they can see the reason for doing so. For example, let your students know:
How does this task relate to what I’ve done previously?
How does it prepare me for what comes next?
How does it relate to the assessments for this module?
Which learning outcomes for the module does this task relate to?