Welcome to the Tuesday Teaching Tip, an easy-to-implement tool that you can use immediately in your classroom teaching. 

TUESDAY TEACHING TIP: Motivating Students

Student motivation is often understood to be a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors – that is, either driven by internally-generated motivators, such as passion for a subject or broader recognition of the value of learning, or external motivators, such as achieving a grade or completing a degree. While it is commonly held that the deepest learning results from intrinsic motivation, the reality is that intrinsic and extrinsic motivators play a role, and on any given day, week, or term the balance between them can shift. 

In small teaching James Lang directs us to consider the work of emotions in driving motivation as derived from psychologist Sarah Cavanagh’s work. He distills three key emotional touchpoints: capturing the attention of students; instilling a sense of purpose, especially self-transcendent purpose (“desire to help other people, to change the world in some positive way, to make a difference”); and “contagious fire” (sparking the social components of emotion). 

This week, we challenge you to try one of these tips from small teaching to motivate your students at this crucial point in the academic year:  

• Open with Wonder: Start class with an image, quotation, or object. Ask students two questions: What do you notice? What do you wonder? This class opener prompts students to recall knowledge from previous classes, readings, or exercises, and/or to make predictions about upcoming learning.   

• Open (and close) with Stories: classes often contain all kinds of stories about the people, historical periods, concepts, and questions relevant to your discipline. Be strategic with how you deploy these narratives: they can be an effective hook to elicit emotion, investment, and curiosity in a subject. You can even split the story to frame the class – starting with the hook and returning to the story at the end of class to bring the journey full circle.  
• Share your Enthusiasm: demonstrate for students why class material is exciting, challenging (in a good way!), and worth caring about. This can show up in all sorts of forms – telling students about how you first encountered the subject matter, sharing what you find fascinating about the topic, or recalling the moment something ‘clicked’ for you. Take 5 minutes before the start of every class to unplug, center yourself, and reflect briefly on the material to find a point of enthusiasm, wonder, and curiosity to share with students. 

We hope that by using one or more of these tips, you find some new and impactful ways to prompt deeper motivators that may seem to be lying dormant in your students. Though these tips may be especially helpful during this time when minds are turning towards vacation plans, post-grad stressors, or EOY festivities, creating regular practices throughout the term to evoke wonder, curiosity, and enthusiasm can facilitate more consistently engaged and motivated learning. 

 

DID YOU DO IT?

Let us know how it went. We would love to hear your feedback about how you implemented today’s Tuesday Teaching Tip in your classroom. Click here to fill out our 3-question survey. The survey is anonymous, but if you choose to enter your name, you’ll be entered in a drawing at the end of the quarter to win a new book from Faculty Development!

 

UPCOMING EVENTS 

• CAFE Grading: Strategies, Successes, & Lessons Learned on Wednesday, May 20 RSVP
  
  
• Third Thursdays Shut Up & Write on Thursday, May 21 RSVP
  
  
• CAFE Campus GenAI Research on Monday, June 1 RSVP
  
  
• End of the Year Party on Wednesday, June 3 - Didn't get your invite? It's not too late! Register for a CAFE or writing retreat today for your ticket in the door.

 

WANT TO READ A LITTLE MORE?

• Lang, James M. small teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, 2nd ed. (Jossey-Bass, 2021), 193-217.
• SCU Digital Resource for Teaching: ‘Motivating Students’
• Cavanagh, Sarah. The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion (West Virginia University Press, 2016).

 

This week’s Tuesday Teaching Tip was prepared by Caitlin Flynn on behalf of Faculty Development and the Center for Teaching Excellence.

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And check out our full calendar of CAFEs and other Faculty Development events.