What Motivates Faculty to Teach in Distance Education? provides seminal data on what has been found to best motivate faculty to teach online. This information is critical to most universities because, in order to stay competitive, many will increase their online course offerings. Faculty will be needed to design and teach these programs.
Motivation is an important factor in and for all education levels. However, as learners in online distance education milieus are away from both teachers, other learners, and the learning environments physically, this concept becomes more important for online education. Motivating learners in distance education and keeping their motivation alive throughout the learning process is an issue that should be emphasized and taken care of for teachers and instructional designers. At this point, although there are many approaches, models, and theories regarding enhancing and sustaining motivation and engagement in the education processes, it is seen that there is not enough work and/or effective and efficient strategies that can be applied in online distance learning environments. Motivation, Volition, and Engagement in Online Distance Learning evaluates motivational obstacles in online distance education both theoretically and practically, identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the online education environments regarding motivation, and provides actionable motivational and volitional strategies for online educators. This book offers coverage of topics such as learning theories, motivation research, and synchronous online learning environments, making it a valuable resource for researchers, professionals, decision makers, institutions in all education levels, academicians, pre-service teachers, and most importantly, online educators from various disciplines and learners from all educational landscapes.
This work explores and explicates learner motivation in online learning environments. More specifically, it uses a case-study approach to examine undergraduate students’ motivation within two formal and separate online learning contexts. In doing so, it recognizes the mutually constitutive relationship of the learner and the learning environment in relation to motivation. This is distinctive from other approaches that tend to focus on designing and creating motivating environments or, alternatively, concentrate on motivation as a stable learner characteristic. In particular, this book identifies a range of factors that can support or undermine learner motivation and discusses each in detail. By unraveling the complexity of learner motivation in such environments, it provides useful guidelines for teachers, instructional designers and academic advisors tasked with building and teaching within online educational contexts.
Online learning poses a multitude of challenges for educators as there are oftentimes limited resources, and in most cases educators are forced to rely on trial-and-error strategies. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, an urgent need has risen for a better understanding of creating and maintaining an engaging digital classroom environment. Pedagogy, Presence, and Motivation in Online Education provides best practice techniques and utilizes analogies from brick-and-mortar education to provide a conceptual framework to a better understanding of how online education functions and shows how to engage students and build a positive digital culture. Covering topics such as hybrid classrooms, self-directed learning skills, and principal leadership, this book is an excellent resource for educators of both higher and K-12 education, educational administration, pre-service teachers, government institutions, policymakers, researchers, and academicians.
Helping teachers understand and apply theory and research is one of the most challenging tasks of teacher preparation and professional development. As they learn about motivation and engagement, teachers need conceptually rich, yet easy-to-use, frameworks. At the same time, teachers must understand that student engagement is not separate from development, instructional decision-making, classroom management, student relationships, and assessment. This volume on teaching teachers about motivation addresses these challenges. The authors share multiple approaches and frameworks to cut through the growing complexity and variety of motivational theories, and tie theory and research to real-world experiences that teachers are likely to encounter in their courses and classroom experiences. Additionally, each chapter is summarized with key “take away” practices. A shared perspective across all the chapters in this volume on teaching teachers about motivation is “walking the talk.” In every chapter, readers will be provided with rich examples of how research on and principles of classroom motivation can be re-conceptualized through a variety of college teaching strategies. Teachers and future teachers learning about motivation need to experience explicit modeling, practice, and constructive feedback in their college courses and professional development in order to incorporate those into their own practice. In addition, a core assumption throughout this volume is the importance of understanding the situated nature of motivation, and avoiding a “one-size-fits” all approach in the classroom. Teachers need to fully interrogate their instructional practices not only in terms of motivational principles, but also for their cultural relevance, equity, and developmental appropriateness. Just like P-12 students, college students bring their histories as learners and beliefs about motivation to their formal study of motivation. That is why college instructors teaching motivation must begin by helping students evaluate their personal beliefs and experiences. Relatedly, college instructors need to know their students and model differentiating their interactions to support each of them. The authors in this volume have, collectively, decades of experience teaching at the college level and conducting research in motivation, and provide readers with a variety of strategies to help teachers and future teachers explore how motivation is supported and undermined. In each chapter in this volume, readers will learn how college instructors can demonstrate what effective, motivationally supportive classrooms look, sound, and feel like.
E-LEARNING COMPANION serves as a resource and quick-reference guide for any course that demands technology skills. In addition to helping students adapt previously mastered skills--such as time management, note-taking, and critical thinking--to the online environment, this text shows students how social networking, cloud file storage, wikis, and blogs can be utilized appropriately and effectively in a college course. Technical terminology and how-to tutorials help students become more capable and flexible online learners, and build skills that will support them throughout college and their future careers. The Fourth Edition is fully updated to be current and relevant for today's online learning environments, and also includes new Workplace Applications, and coverage of professional behavior and professional emails. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
Regardless of the field or discipline, technology is rapidly advancing, and individuals are faced with the challenge of adapting to these new innovations. To remain up-to-date on the current practices, teachers and administrators alike must constantly stay informed of the latest advances in their fields. Teacher Training and Professional Development: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications contains a compendium of the latest academic material on the methods, skills, and techniques that are essential to lifelong learning and professional advancement. Including innovative studies on teaching quality, pre-service teacher preparation, and faculty enrichment, this multi-volume book is an ideal source for academics, professionals, students, practitioners, and researchers.
Online instruction is rapidly expanding the way administrators and educators think about and plan instruction. In addition, due to a pandemic, online instructional practices and learning in a virtual environment are being implemented with very little training or support. Educators are learning new tools and strategies at a quick pace, and often on their own, even through resistance. It is important to explore lessons learned through the pandemic but also of importance is sharing the virtual classroom options and instruction that align to best practices when transitioning to online instruction. Sharing these will allow educators to understand and learn that virtual instruction can benefit all, even when not used out of need, and can enhance face-to-face courses in many ways. The Handbook of Research on Lessons Learned From Transitioning to Virtual Classrooms During a Pandemic is a critical reference that presents lessons instructors have learned throughout the COVID-19 pandemic including what programs and tools were found to be the most impactful and useful and how to effectively embed virtual teaching into face-to-face teaching. With difficult choices to be made and implemented, this topic and collection of writings demonstrates the learning curve in a state of survival and also lessons and resources learned that will be useful when moving back to face-to-face instruction as a tool to continue to use. Highlighted topics include the frustrations faced during the transition, lessons learned from a variety of viewpoints, resources found and used to support instruction, online learner perspectives and thoughts, online course content, and best practices in transitioning to online instruction. This book is ideal for teachers, principals, school leaders, instructional designers, curriculum developers, higher education professors, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, practitioners, researchers, and anyone interested in developing more effective virtual and in-classroom teaching methods.
A Classroom of One is Gene Maeroff's "report from the front" on the short history and status of online learning in the United States and around the world. Maeroff is a reporter who takes you to the schools from Penn State's World Campus to the Florida Virtual School to the newly emerging online learning initiatives in Afghanistan. His journey ultimately provides a snapshot of the way in which technology is changing the minds of people with regard to the nature of higher education. He looks at the method of electronic delivery, the quality of the information being delivered and quality of interaction it engenders. He looks at the way learners are adapting to this new technology and how much responsibility is put on the student's shoulders. Finally, and maybe tellingly, he looks at the business of online learning.
Combining a lively voice with scientific research, Learning Grows explores the fascinating and useful world of student motivation. Written for teachers—and everyone interested in teaching and learning—Learning Grows helps classrooms flourish by fostering students’ intrinsic motivation. Part I delves into Mindset. Although seemingly well known, this theory is often oversimplified and widely misunderstood. By exploring its step-by-step historical development, we can use it more flexibly and effectively to help learners ‘charge!’ when they might otherwise ‘retreat.’ Part II enters the paradoxical world of Stereotype Threat. A surprising cascade of counter-intuitive effects can cause students to struggle in school—not because they don’t care, but because they work too hard. The right classroom strategies block this demotivational pathway, and thereby foster student learning. By interleaving psychology and neuroscience research with dozens of practical classroom examples, Learning Grows makes these two theories both clear and immediately useful. Learning Grows is the second book in the series “A Teacher’s Guide to the Learning Brain.” The first book, Learning Begins, studies the science of working memory and attention.
