To Motivate Students:
- Create useful and relevant learning experiences based on the age group and interests of your learners
Emphasis on: practical knowledge, immediate relevancy - Facilitate exploration
Emphasis on: curiosity, opportunity to construct knowledge use of all sorts of materials, references, infographics, short videos, … - Build community and integrate social media
Emphasis on: collaboration, commenting and sharing, facilitate group discussions and exchanging knowledge, … - A voice behind the video is not enough
Add a personal touch. Your course needs to have a face. Make yourself available to people. - Challenge through games
Use different problem solving exercises and case studies. Make your learners look for and find solutions. - Use humor
Humour would work great even with the most demotivated learners on your course. - Chunk information
Chunking is essential, as it helps people remember and assimilate information. Small bits are easier to process. - Add suspense
Don’t give out everything your course is about in the beginning. - Accommodate individual interests and career goals
Empower learners to work on these goals and individualize the training to suit their needs. - Stimulate your learners
Encourage them to think by either providing them with brain teasers, or by asking thought-provoking questions. - Let learning occur through mistakes
According to a German proverb “you will become clever through your mistakes“, and for sure “practice makes perfect“. - Make it visually-compelling
Did you know that 83% of learning occurs visually? - Get Emotional
If you don’t sound inspiring, if your materials are not exciting, how will you motivate your learners? Get them emotionally involved too – come up with controversial statements, tap on memories, add real-life stories. - Get examples relevant to the learners’ environment
Your learners may not always remember to associate what is learned with its application at the workplace. - Be respectful to them
- Ask for feedback
It is motivating to know that your opinion contributes to the course. - Present the benefits of undertaking the course
I don’t know why I didn’t start with this one. Sometimes outlining the benefits is all it takes.
