Motivating Students to Learn: Some Tips to Try
- Find out about your students' interests, experiences, hobbies, career goals... As often as you can, relate the content to students' interests.
- Use lots of examples, illustrations, anecdotes, stories.
- Use humour.
- Use appropriate self-disclosure. Be a "real" person. Let students know some things about you.
- Admit mistakes, lack of knowledge. Don't try to be THE authority.
- Talk less than your students do.
- Encourage interaction among students. Use group work, encourage discussion, try brainstorming, role playing, whatever you feel comfortable with. Try something NEW.
- LISTEN.
- Give positive feedback, verbally (praise) and non-verbally (make eye-contact, smile, nod).
- Make sure that the level of teaching matches students' background, ability, and experience.
- Check that the relevance of what you're doing is clear to the students.
- Use as much VARIETY in your methods and materials as possible.
- Be clear about what's going to happen. Use an agenda.
- Encourage students to make decisions about their own Learning -- give them CHOICES, act on their suggestions.
- If possible, encourage students to have input into how they will be evaluated.
- Ask students how the sessions could be made more interesting!
- Instructional Development Centre -
Queen's University
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Last updated June 24, 1997
http://www.queensu.ca/idc/trainers/hand/motivate.html