Heather Holmes's Profile

extrinsic motivators can often distract students from learning the subject at hand.

Do so by requiring students to apply, synthesize, or evaluate material instead of merely comprehending or memorizing material.

The challenge, then, is to provide teaching and learning activities that are both stimulating and offer students a degree of personal control.

Become a role model for student interest.

Use a variety of student-active teaching activities. 

Set realistic performance goals

Place appropriate emphasis on testing and grading

Be free with praise and constructive in criticism. 

Capitalize on students' existing needs.

Make students active participants in learning

Ask students to analyze what makes their classes more or less "motivating."

Hold high but realistic expectations for your students

Help students set achievable goals for themselves.

Tell students what they need to do to succeed in your course.

Strengthen students' self-motivation

Avoid creating intense competition among students.

Be enthusiastic about your subject.

Find out why students
are enrolled in your course, how they feel about the subject matter, and what
their expectations are.

Work from students' strengths and interests.

When possible, let students have some say in choosing what will be studied.

Increase the difficulty of the material as the semester progresses.

Vary your teaching methods.

Emphasize mastery and learning rather than grades.

eliminating complex systems
of credit points

Design tests that encourage the kind of learning you want students to
achieve.

Avoid using grades as threats.

Give students feedback as quickly as possible.

Reward success.

Introduce students to the good work done by their peers.

Be specific when giving negative feedback.

Avoid demeaning comments.

Avoid giving in to students' pleas for "the answer" to homework problems.

Use cooperative learning groups to help individualize
the educational goals, learning processes, assessment procedures,
and reporting procedures for gifted and disabled students.

When cooperative learning is used in instruction and assessment,
there are two levels of assessment and evaluation--the individual
and the group. Individual assessment is more frequent than group
assessment, but both are important. Since the purpose of cooperative
learning groups is to make each member a stronger individual
in his or her own right, a pattern to classroom learning is created
where students learn in a cooperative group, individually demonstrate
their learning, then debrief the learning in their cooperative
group

group members perceive that they are linked with each other in a way that one cannot succeed unless everyone succeeds.

(a) each group member's efforts are required and indispensable for group success and (b) each group member has a unique contribution to make to the joint effort because of his or her resources and/or role and task responsibilities.

Individual accountability exists when the performance of each individual is assessed and the results are given back to the group and the individual in order to ascertain who needs more assistance, support, and encouragement in learning.

Students learn together so that they subsequently can gain greater individual competency

The fourth basic element of cooperative learning is teaching students the required interpersonal and small group skills.

Instead, social skills must be taught to students just as purposefully and precisely as academic skills.