(This is Part Two in an ongoing series responding to specific teacher questions related to remote learning. You can see Part One .)
Note: In addition to a recent and offering advice to educators making the transition to remote learning, and a video offering advice to parents (along many more upcoming related posts), I鈥檝e begun a series of short posts .
Part One dealt with
Today鈥檚 question comes from :
What are ways to keep student engagement up? How do we motivate reluctant learners to continue learning in a virtual environment?
I鈥檒l be sharing multiple posts responding to this question in the coming days.
Five psychological principles
Harry Fletcher-Wood has worked in schools in Japan, India, and the U.K., teaching history and leading teacher development. He鈥檚 now a teacher educator at Ambition Institute and the author of . For his next book, he鈥檚 spent two years researching the behavioural science influencing student behaviour. You can learn more about it . You can find his blog at ; he鈥檚 on Twitter as .
Around the world, school systems have closed, and teachers have scrambled to get their classes online or provide students with printed work. After all that effort focused on what we want students to do, we face a new challenge: We don鈥檛 know how long schools are going to be closed, and too few of our students are completing the tasks we鈥檝e sent home or showing up to online classes. How can we encourage students to 鈥渢urn up鈥� to remote learning? How can we motivate them to complete the tasks we鈥檝e sent home? And how can we avoid growing the achievement gap while schools remain closed?
I鈥檝e spent the last two years researching the science of behaviour, trying to understand what influences students. In this post, I鈥檒l highlight five psychological principles we can apply quickly and easily to boost student participation. You can read about them in more detail鈥攁nd the evidence behind them鈥�, or watch a seven-minute video summarising them .
1) Help students form habits: Ask them to do one or two simple things regularly
Once students have formed a habit, they鈥檒l keep doing it: The crucial thing now is getting them to form a couple of productive home-study habits. We can help them to do this by giving just one or two clear, simple goals, like 鈥淐omplete all the tasks you get sent each week鈥� or 鈥淎ttend every online class.鈥� And we can help make it a habit by asking them to pick a specific context to work in (habits stick when you do something for long enough in the same context: That might be a place, a time or a cue to work. Once students have formed the basic habit, we can make it more elaborate鈥� asking them to respond to feedback, for example鈥攂ut the habit of turning up is the crucial foundation.
2) Emphasise the chance to see their friends
No one likes to miss out. An important reason for turning up to an online or virtual lesson is to catch up with your friends and still feel part of something bigger than your own household. We can show students that this chance still exists and encourage them not to miss out on the chance to be part of it.
3) Show students that their peers are turning up
This follows from point 2: If you know that everyone else is doing something, it feels pretty clear that it鈥檚 the right thing to do (panic buying is a good example!). Whenever you get a positive result鈥攍ots of students attend class, lots of students hand in work on time鈥攎ake sure everyone knows about it. (If the results aren鈥檛 positive, keep quiet about them鈥攐r highlight positive trends: more students than ever handing in work on time, for example).
4) Make it easy for students to respond, then celebrate their responses
Whenever we identify a barrier to students responding, we need to remove it. For example, if students aren鈥檛 responding to the platform/aren鈥檛 emailing, is it possible to give them access via cellphones or accept pictures of work via Whatsapp? Whenever we do see progress, we want to emphasise it with students, no matter how small the progress is. We can celebrate them completing work to a high standard, but we can also celebrate a single correct answer or them managing to wrestle the laptop from their little brother and join the class. If students feel like they鈥檙e winning, this will give them a big confidence boost and encourage them to keep attending.
5) Plan to relaunch
It takes time to form new habits: maybe six to eight weeks under the best circumstances. Don鈥檛 blame students (or yourself!) if they鈥檙e slow to form good routines under stressful circumstances. If we expect students to struggle, we can also plan to relaunch things, whenever the chance arises: giving students a fresh start at the start of a new day, week, or semester.
This is a tough situation for students and teachers alike. A little psychology can get us a long way in encouraging students to show up.
Thanks to Jill for her question and to Harry for his response!
Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.
Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it鈥檚 selected or if you鈥檇 prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.
You can also contact me on Twitter at .
Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It鈥檚 titled .
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via or And if you missed any of the highlights from the first eight years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn鈥檛 include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the 鈥渁nswers鈥� category found in the sidebar.
I am also creating a .
Look for many more questions-and-answers in the future!