Supporting students imply making them better learners and motivating them to engage with the learning activities both in the classroom and in a flipped class to enable learner retain the relevant concepts learned and apply this in a real world situation by moving the learner from ignorance to an informed person (UKPSF: A4).
The experience I had as an undergraduate at a Nigerian university where motivating students is not considered as important for attainment because of the competition for higher education places and as a result of lecturers not being assessed based on student performance. As a consequence of this, many things I learned were done through ‘rote’ learning. I never thought it necessary to really comprehend and apply learning to practice. My view of higher education then was that it is completely irrelevant to real life situation of adult working life.
The word motivation has been defined by various psychologists and the word in this context means aroused desire by a person for participation in learning process as posited by Curzon, (2006). In attempting to motivate my students, I make sure the topic we are treating in Economics is related to a real life situation in any part of the world and video clips are shown through youtube to evidence this in class and this makes them appreciate that what we are doing in class is not isolated from the larger society. (UKPSF: V2).
In an attempt to apply McGregor’s theory X and Y to education, Markwell, (2004) contend that a teacher that assumes student always prefer to be directed and not wanting to be responsible for their own learning among other traits belong to theory X while a teacher who assumes students that possess imagination, creativity, and ingenuity are widely distributed within the student population and these skills will be willingly applied to the learning process among other traits belongs to theory Y. The challenge for me as a result of this is that I need to identify the different grouping of the X and Y students and mix them up in groups to encourage peer learning and ensure inclusiveness and motivate the weaker ones (UKPSF: A5).
The main challenge with this is that some of the students struggle with reading and comprehending the articles and it seems this method works well for some of them and not so for others. This is what Vygotsky, (1997) refer to as zone of proximal development which is “the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers”.
To overcome this I have devised a means of uploading the articles on Blackboard days before the lectures and to ensure that they have gone through the materials, I start by asking general simple questions relating to the article and this takes us to the lecture discussion and to conclude we go through some ‘Kahoot’ quiz in which I always encourage the spirit of competition between the students. This represents the ‘engage’ level in the 3E as postulated by Smyth et al, (2011).
Learning through online motivation and moving the students to the ‘extend’ and ‘empower’ level as proposed by Smyth et al, (2011) is always a challenge for international students as a result of cultural differences and previous access to the internet due to level of internet and broadband development in different countries.
Another major challenge is that some of the students experience logging out by the system while in the classroom maybe as a result of the relative large size of the class or the challenge of technology. Visser, (1998) in his motivational model that was based on Keller’s Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction model of motivation where she found an increase in retention over a control group, but the group sizes were very small.
Action Point
- Continue to engage in CPD to enable the use of evidence-based approaches in facilitating effective learning and teaching (UKPSF: V3).
References:
Curzon, L.B. (2006), Teaching in Further Education: An Outline of Principles and Practice, MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.
Markwell, J. (2004), The Human Side of Science Education: Using McGregor’s theory Y as a framework for improving student motivation, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, Vol. 32, No. 5, pp. 323-325.
Smyth, K., Bruce, S., Fotheringham, J. and Mainka, C. (2011), Benchmark for the use of technology in modules, Creative Commons as downloaded.
The UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supported learning in higher education. (2011), http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/UKPSF
Visser, L. (1998). The development of motivational communication in distance education. Thesis submitted towards PhD, University of Twente, the Netherlands.
Vygotsky, L. (1978), Interaction between learning and development, Mind and Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 79-91 in Readings on the Development of Children (1997), Edited by: Gauvain, M. and Cole, M.
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