Can’t seem to keep your students motivated in an online class? Read this article to find out the 7 most effective ways to keep them motivated!
To do anything in life, one must be motivated and willing. Similarly, learning in any system, whether online or in-person, requires a lot of motivation. The level of motivation can affect a student’s learning in many ways. The higher the motivation level, the better are the student’s chances of learning and succeeding and vice-versa. While motivation is essential in every learning system and environment, online learning comparatively requires much higher motivation levels. Teachers in traditional classrooms have an easier time keeping the students motivated and interested. While on the other hand, maintaining high levels of motivation in an online education system can become challenging for the students and the teachers.
Since online tuition in Reading, High Wycombe, London, Harrow and many other towns in the UK is currently on the rise, it is about time that online tutors look for ways to keep their students motivated in an online tutoring system.
Following are the seven most effective ways through which tutors can keep students motivated in an online learning system:
Being a teacher is not that easy. It requires a lot of determination, patience and a passion for teaching. While no teacher has it easy, online tutors can sometimes have it worse. Having students across the computer screen can make it impossible to keep an eye on all their activities and keep them interested in the lesson.
Luckily, we’re here to help!
- Keep it interesting
The purpose of online tutoring is to provide additional academic support to the students. Nevertheless, a tutor cannot achieve this goal until the students are motivated enough to concentrate and participate in the class. To tackle this problem, an online tutor must keep the lesson interesting at all times. Finding interesting ways to make a boring Maths lesson less tiring and more engaging using fun examples and activities can make the entire learning experience more rewarding for your students and yourself.
One way to do this is to use visual aids, such as graphics and short videos. Listening to a tutor going on and on about a Maths problem can become uninteresting quickly, students can start to lose motivation when the lesson becomes boring. Therefore, making your daily lessons interesting can help keep your students motivated and more interested in their education.
- Keep it Relevant
We all had teachers in our schools and colleges who would go utterly off-track during a lesson. While this may not have looked that bad in an in-person class; going off-track or sharing irrelevant information in an online course can backfire easily. This can even give your students more reasons to not pay attention and lose the little motivation they have left. This does not entirely mean that you cannot crack a joke or tell a story during a class, but make sure that all your stories and jokes are relevant to what you’re teaching. For instance, telling the old alphabet joke during a Year 1 English lesson can be fun and even create a more engaging environment for your students. However, telling a chicken joke during a Maths lesson may not be the best idea as you can risk diverting your students’ attention.
- Incentives are a necessity.
Humans are competitive, and they like to win. While it is not a good idea to put your students in unhealthy rivalry; a little classroom competition can be productive and increase motivation. Setting incentives and rewards for best performances can help motivate your students to participate, engage and learn more during the class. Incentives in online tutoring can involve an early peek into the upcoming assignment, extension on a deadline, increasing marks in any previous quizzes or anything that your students may want in particular. Not only will this help in motivating your students, but at the same time, it will provide you with insights into your students’ mental abilities and capacities.
- Take a break
Studies have shown that the highest concentration-time for students in the classroom is 10 to 20 minutes. This means that, on a good day, you roughly have 14-16 minutes before your students’ minds start wandering to other places. Being an online tutor, it is your job to make the most out of those few minutes, after which you might need to take a little break. Although it is not practical to give breaks after every 10-20 minutes; however, to keep your students motivated and attentive, what you can do is include a lesson activity after every 15 minutes. This way, you can give your students enough time to focus back on the lesson without actually wasting your class time.
Apart from the activity breaks, it is crucial that you give your students a break between sessions. Tiredness kills motivation; the more tired a student is, the less motivated he will be. During all your classes, you have to make sure that your students are well-rested and not exhausted; otherwise, you both will only waste your time.
- Keep it real
One of the most common questions that students ask themselves during a class is, ‘When am I ever going to need this in real life? ‘ While learning anything, if we believe that we might never need this information in the future or we don’t see any possible situation coming up where that knowledge might be helpful, our minds involuntarily begin to ignore whatever is being said. This happens with students all the time; if they believe some information to be useless, they lose their motivation to learn it. To avoid this problem, you need to spend some time researching the practical use of knowledge in real-life situations. For instance, if you’re teaching Maths, you can tell your students the practical application of Algebra in engineering. This way, knowing that people are using this knowledge at their real jobs will motivate your students to learn and recognise the value of education.
- Give positive feedback
Positive feedback can be a driving force for students to strive harder to achieve success. Positive remarks daily can motivate the student to do better in the future. Students desire approval from their teachers, and if they feel their work is recognised and respected, they are more likely to be excited about learning. To make your pupils feel valued, you must encourage constructive communication and openness to new ideas. Students will be more willing to study if your classroom has a welcoming environment where they feel heard and appreciated. Simply saying “nice job” or “good work” can go a long way.
- Have a good personality
Nothing beats a pleasant personality. Teachers and tutors who have gracious personalities are significantly more likely to keep their students interested in learning. Every student has a favourite teacher, and if you ask the student their reason for liking a particular teacher, ninety per cent of the time, they would say something like, ‘she’s very kind‘ or ‘he always makes us laugh’. Students subconsciously become more attentive and interested in a subject and class if the one who’s teaching it is a kind and friendly person. So, to keep your students motivated to learn more, try never being negative, instead, have positive energy and vibe.
To sum it up, it can be hard to keep your students motivated and energised in an online learning system. However, with just a little effort, you can make your learning sessions a thousand times more productive and beneficial for the students and yourself.