Welcome to the Teaching and Learning Guide for Increasing Student Motivation! 

This guide includes tips and best practices designed to help you: 

• Differentiate between types of student motivation

• Create a classroom environment where students are motivated

• Make course content relevant to students

• Apply strategies to help students develop a growth mindset

• Provide motivating formative assessments

Motivating students is one of the keys to student success in our courses. Ample research points to the importance of motivation to increase student success. In a research study, Susan Ambrose writes, “Students’ motivation determines, directs, and sustains what they do learn.”

Yet you may often find that yourstudents lack the motivation to engage with and complete coursework. We often focus on external factors that may affect student motivation, such as their phones, jobs, families, and lives outside the classroom. Although complex lives do indeed affect student motivation, we can only control how students feel while participating in our classes. Research indicates that motivation is not static. A student's motivation ebbs and flows throughout their education, and that means it can be impacted by our teaching practices. 

As stated by Artze-Vega et al., “Research suggests that students are more likely to choose to learn something if they perceive the assignment as valuable or relevant, while their levels of engagement will be highest when they feel they can accomplish it successfully.” Several factors impact student motivation: 

• Environment 

• Choice

• Mindset

• Relevance

This guide will explore these four factors and provide specific tips to increase your students’ motivation.

Students’ sense of belonging increases their motivation. Providing a safe and welcoming environment for students is crucial to motivating them (Ferrer et al.). How to create a safe and welcoming environment is more challenging to understand, although research points to several methods that could enhance students’ feelings of belonging in their courses. These methods include providing a range of opportunities for students to connect; building positive relationships; and setting guidelines that value autonomy. 

Provide a range of opportunities for students to connect 

The importance of inclusive and welcoming classroom environments is often cited as critical to student motivation. The key to creating a welcoming space is for students to feel connected to one another and to the course material (Patrick, Hisley, & Kempler, 2000). Instructors often offer ice-breaker activities at the beginning of a semester, but it may be helpful to do ice-breaker activities throughout the semester so that student connection is reinforced throughout a course. You can even solicit ideas from your students about ice-breaker questions or activities they’d like to do.

In face-to-face classes, connection may come more easily through the spontaneous interactions students have with each other, such as asking someone to borrow a pencil. In online courses, these opportunities must be more intentionally cultivated by the instructor. A simple way to encourage student connection in either online or face-to-face classes is encouraging students to exchange phone numbers or email addresses with another student or a couple of students in class. You can structure this method around study or support groups. At the beginning of the semester, you can either assign groups or ask students to choose their own so that they have a “buddy” with whom to work through difficult ideas, ask about missed classes, or share thoughts about the course.

Set specific guidelines for class interaction

 When it comes to fostering respect and connection, interpersonal skills that are harder to define, it may be most helpful to offer practical guidance. For example, you can work with students to create policies about respectful communication. A communication policy is especially important in an online classroom where nuances of tone and body language can be lost. You can enlist students to help come up with specific etiquette ideas, such as the use of emojis. 

You can also model for students how to interact respectfully. For example, instructors should model how to make thoughtful contributions to discussion forums, ask clarifying questions, and use encouraging language.

Build positive student-teacher relationships 

Forging connections also relies on creating positive student-teacher relationships. Many motivation studies have shown that students feel more motivated when they perceive that their instructors are enthusiastic about the course and enthusiastic about encouraging students to learn the material (Ahn et al.). You can make simple changes in language to help communicate your enthusiasm about learning. For example, plainly state that you are excited about course material in your lectures or use student feedback to show you are stimulated by students’ ideas. Assignments such as dialogue journals can help students and instructors connect with each other. Dialogue journals mimic a conversation between students and instructors, so you must find time to adequately respond to students’ journals. 

Research in Student Development Theory (SDT) has found that autonomous motivation is always optimal. This means students are motivated intrinsically. It is also important, then, for instructors to be mindful that their language is always respectful of students’ autonomy. According to Howard et al., autonomy-supportive practices require consideration of the student as a person. You can show that you value student autonomy by acknowledging students' feelings and preferences. Ahn et al write that students perceive that their autonomy is being respected when they feel that “the unique challenges they face are appreciated, their perspectives are respected, and that they and their learning are supported.” It is also important to minimize controlling language and behavior. When students feel safe with you, they are more likely to take learning risks.

Autonomy-supported practices include giving students meaningful choices. Whereas the previous section encouraged language that centers on autonomy, this section will give more specific examples of how to offer students relevant choices. There are simple practices you can employ to embrace student choice, including:

Make group work optional. For example, students can choose whether they complete an assignment as a group or individually. This option values that students have different preferences around working together and that some students have schedules that prevent them from working together easily. 

Allow students to sign up for groups themselves. Allowing students to choose their own groups is a simple way of communicating that they can make choices in the classroom. 

Present a range of timely and relevant topics. Giving students many ways to apply their learning through relevant current events communicates to them that they can choose how to apply course knowledge. 

Allow students to submit assignments in various formats. For example, students may choose to submit a traditional essay, video, or infographic as their assignment submission. Giving students this choice shows that you value their individual interests and skill sets. 

Build in flexibility. Whenever there is space for flexibility, students appreciate forming their own learning journey. This can mean more flexible due dates within a range or allowing students to choose the order in which they complete a series of activities. 

To stay motivated, students must believe that they can improve. Confidence is important for student motivation, but it’s also key to encourage students to have a growth mindset. There are strategies and best practices you can use to build a growth mindset in students. 

A growth mindset is instilling a belief in students that they can develop their intelligence and abilities with effort. In order to foster this belief in students, it is important for them to see their own improvement. You can use the following communication and feedback strategies to help your students build a growth mindset: 

• Instead of praising something fixed and innate in feedback to students, focus on specific actions that students can control. For example, you might praise how much detail a student has included in a lab report. Or, you might note how much preparation a student puts into a paper or presentation. 

• When you have constructive feedback to give, focus on growth and be specific. For example, include a specific tip that students can use to help them improve, such as reading a question more slowly or breaking down a problem into smaller steps. It is also helpful to point students toward specific course resources they can use to improve. For example, you can give students a specific time stamp for where to rewatch a course video lecture or specific pages to review. 

• Offer more opportunities for lower-stakes check-ins and assignments. Offering students opportunities to complete simpler tasks can help build their confidence and activate their task centers. An example of a low-stakes assignment is a prior knowledge reflection, where students brainstorm about what they already know about a topic. Prior knowledge reflections can also help you find out what gaps in knowledge your students have. 

• Let students know you believe they can successfully complete coursework. It might be helpful to tell students about a time you struggled to understand a course concept and how you persisted. Or, simply let students know you believe they are capable of doing well in the class in your feedback to them. Researchers Cohen, Steele, and Ross coined the strategy for “wise feedback.” Wise feedback includes two steps

1. Indicate that the instructor has high standards.

2. Express confidence that the student has the capacity to reach those standards. 

• Engage students in their own goal-setting and progress tracking. It can be helpful to give students specific examples of how to create achievable goals that are specific to the course. Once students have set goals, they can return to them after major assignments or tests to check their progress. 

• Encourage students to reflect on their work and give themselves feedback. One way to encourage this is by using exam wrappers. An exam wrapper asks students to review their test and examine the items they answered incorrectly. They will look for patterns in their errors or major concepts they had trouble with. Effective exam wrappers also encourage students to reflect on how they prepared for an exam. How much time did they invest? What did studying involve? If their strategies didn’t work, offer suggestions for what else they could have done. 

Students come to college with a wealth of knowledge and experiences already. When students come to a specific class, they often search for a way to connect the materials with what they already know. Research in Student Development Theory has shown that motivation increases when instructors show students the relevance and value of a lesson’s content and provide rationales for activities (Ahn et al.)

It can be helpful to include universally relevant topics like social media and environmental sustainability. However, relevance is more complex than including topics of interest to students. Instead, try to connect to students’ cultural experiences, values, goals, and dreams in order to provide more meaningful opportunities for students to connect with course content. As Leenknecht et al note, your goal as the instructor is not to make everything in the class interesting and exciting for students. Instead, aim to communicate the larger purpose of what students are learning. 

In both online and face-to-face courses, instructors can improve the relevance of learning activities by including current events during a teaching period or drawing on students’ daily experiences (Ferrer et al.). Some additional tips for improving relevance include: 

• Makie space for students to engage with tasks in their own way

• Make a habit of occasionally stopping an activity to explain why it’s relevant

• Ask students to reflect on how the course materials connect to their lives

• Design tasks that end with a public product

• Introduce assignments that mirror what students may encounter in the field

When students believe they are completing tasks that will benefit them and their communities, they are more likely to stay motivated. Offering choice can help students choose projects that are relevant to their interests and goals, but they also may need help understanding why course content is relevant and how they can apply it to their future projects.

Incorporate autonomy into assessment 

Research also shows that assessments that students find relevant keep them motivated while likely minimizing academic dishonesty, especially in online courses (Artze-Vega et al.). As discussed earlier, according to Student Development Theory, the most lasting motivation is intrinsic, autonomous motivation. Consequences and incentives can hamper this type of motivation. When assessing students, consider the value of an extrinsic reward, such as a grade, compared to the value of an intrinsic reward, such as a student’s feelings of accomplishment. 

Leenknecht et al. suggest reframing how instructors think of assessment. They write that students are more motivated when “assessment is seen as a social activity in which a teacher, a student, and peers interact and discuss the standards, criteria and the assessment practices.” Assessment in this view is a cyclical process of high- and low-stakes tasks in which students are actively involved and consulted. 

Write relevant course- and module-level objectives

Research in course design often focuses on the importance of measurable learning outcomes, but it’s also important to consider if outcomes are meaningful. Meaningful course outcomes support students’ ability to succeed in future courses and in their future careers. Meaningful outcomes communicate with students the significant learning you expect them to complete at the end of the course. 

When reviewing either module or course objectives for meaningfulness, you can ask yourself if they bring students closer to mastery of the course concepts. The following questions can also be helpful: 

• Is this skill achievable? 

• Is this skill or concept relevant to students’ lives? 

• Can students use this skill in the future, either in other courses or in their future jobs? 

• Does this skill offer a valuable step toward mastery?

• Ahn, Inok, Ming Ming Chiu, and Helen Patrick. “Connecting Teacher and Student Motivation: Student-Perceived Teacher Need-Supportive Practices and Student Need Satisfaction.” Contemporary educational psychology 64 (2021): 101950.

• Artze-Vega, I., Darby, F., Dewsbury, B., and Imad, M. The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2023). 

• Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Ferrer, Justine, Allison Ringer, Kerrie Saville, Melissa A Parris, and Kia Kashi. “Students’ Motivation and Engagement in Higher Education: The Importance of Attitude to Online Learning.” Higher education 83, no. 2 (2022): 317–38.

• Gares, Sheryl L, James K Kariuki, and Brian P Rempel. “Community Matters: Student–Instructor Relationships Foster Student Motivation and Engagement in an Emergency Remote Teaching Environment.” Journal of Chemical Education 97, no. 9 (2020): 3332–35.

• Howard, Joshua L., Julien S. Bureau, Frédéric Guay, Jane X. Y. Chong, and Richard M. Ryan. “Student Motivation and Associated Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis From Self-Determination Theory.” Perspectives on psychological science 16, no. 6 (2021): 1300-1323.

• Leenknecht, Martijn, Lisette Wijnia, Martine Köhlen, Luke Fryer, Remy Rikers, and Sofie Loyens. “Formative Assessment as Practice: The Role of Students' Motivation.”Assessment and evaluation in higher education 46, no. 2 (2021): 236-55.

• Nilson, L. (2016). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors  (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass.

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