Don't Give Up On Your Unmotivated Students

 

Imagine this scenario… 

You’ve tried whiteboard and annotate activities, breakout rooms, and polls. However, no matter how much you try, you hear crickets and feel like you’re ‘pulling teeth’ when trying to get your students to engage with the content. 

While it might feel discouraging, unmotivated learners are a challenge even for the best teachers. In this scenario, perhaps it’s not your content or your facilitation skills that are at the root of this problem. In fact, it could be your learners and their motivation. 

Consider the golden rule in learning: “What’s in it for me?”

When your students engage in any type of learning, they are probably wondering why such learning experience will be useful, relevant, or interesting to them. According to adult learning theory, your learners want to have a purpose and be able to take the new nugget of knowledge and to do something with it. Thus, identifying your students’ attitudes and motivations can help you better accommodate the learning experience. Take a moment here to consider why they are there and what they want or need to get out of the learning experience. 

The differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Depending on the subject matter and context, your class is probably split into groups of learners who are either intrinsically or extrinsically motivated by the learning experience. 

Intrinsically motivated learners are interested in the topic for the sake of one’s own personal satisfaction or have a specific problem they are trying to solve. They are motivated because it makes them feel good, is personally challenging, and leads to a sense of accomplishment. On the other hand, extrinsically motivated learners are motivated by an outside reward or punishment. In general, anything that is “required” usually taps into the learner’s extrinsic motivation.

With this in mind, we can assume that sparking intrinsic motivation in your learners could be the possible solution to our initial scenario. 

So, how do you work with each type?

Strategies for intrinsically motivated learners could include: 

• Allow learners to work on their own problems. Give your learners the freedom to choose which topics matter most to them. 
• Allow learners to teach you something. Have your students prepare to lead the rest of the class into discussions based on the coursework topic.  
• Conduct an exit ticket survey after each week.  Through an informal survey or an open forum discussion, you can identify how students are receiving and processing the content. This type of information gathering will help you understand where the underlying problems may be. Perhaps, learners feel the material is too challenging, not real-world applicable, delivery is boring, time of day is too late, etc. 

Strategies for extrinsically motivated learners could include: 

• Uncover your learner’s hidden intrinsic motivators. Pull student’s asynchronous responses and incorporate them into the live session. This gives them a lower risk way to engage while boosting their learner confidence. 
• Stick to specific examples that relate to real-life scenarios or application. Figure out what annoys them, and provide a solution. By using authentic and genuinely interesting challenges, you’ll grab the learner’s attention and spark an interest in wanting to learn more. 
• Add a little friendly competition through gamification. Play in-class games such as jeopardy to check for students’ understanding, while adding a friendly competition component to drum up excitement and motivation. 

Considering what motivates your students will go a long way in stirring engagement in the live classroom. 

Need other ideas? The Faculty Engagement and Development team hosts a variety of enrichment seminars on student engagement topics and strategies. Check out our upcoming calendar here. 

Resources:

• Dirksen, J. (2016). Who are your learners? In Design for how people learn (pp. 28-33). United States of America: New Riders.
• Elizabeth Mulvahill on July 3, 2. (2018, July 03). Understanding Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation in the Classroom. Retrieved October 19, 2020, from https://www.weareteachers.com/understanding-intrinsic-vs-extrinsic-motivation-in-the-classroom/ 
• Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
• Valerio, K. (2012). Intrinsic motivation in the classroom. Journal of Student Engagement: Education Matters, 2(1), 30-35.