How to motivate your students to engage in learning

Guest Post about Communities of Practice on the BUZZ (Online Teaching Jobs, Resources, and Edupreneurship Opportunities)

 

The following guest post is from Leslie Bowman, accomplished author and teacher (both online and on campus).   You can find her new book, Online Teaching and Learning: Communities of Practice  on Amazon (you don’t need a Kindle; I use smartphone and tablet kindle apps)

Excerpt:

Faculty often will say that the most frustrating parts of teaching online are the failure and drop rates in their classes. I find that lack of engagement in interactive dialogue is the single highest contributing factor that influences learning, or lack thereof. ... I would estimate that about 90% just want to pass the course with the least effort possible; learning is an afterthought or by-product. Through struggles and experimentation with various strategies to counteract this phenomenon, I have developed a workable and surprisingly easy solution: Communities of Practice.

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Purchase one book and get another book FREE (PDF file; limit one per reader). Send email to prof.bowman@gmail.com with WINTER BOOK DEAL in the subject line. Include a copy of the sale invoice and the name of your FREE book. All orders fulfilled within 24 hours. 

 

Profs: COP strategies

What strategies in Creating Communities of Practice did you find that you could use in your classes now (even if classes have already started)? When I first started using these strategies, I added a share/practice/review forum in all the weekly discussions so that students could do peer reviews on their upcoming assignments. They loved it. Since then, I've put that in all my online classes that are pre-designed. In classes that I design, the SPR is incorporated into the unit discussions and it's not a separate forum, just part of the discussion structure. Students are "teaching each other" and polishing critical thinking skills without "formal" instruction in these skills. It's working out quite nicely and at the end of every class, I get comments about how much they enjoy the interactive and engaging discussions. What can you do in your class to enhance these qualities in communication?