Title: Motivation Improvement in K-12
Author Name: Jaylon Jones
1. Introduction:
In March of 2020, the world changed in the blink of an eye for everybody due to the pandemic. We were forced to adjust on the fly. Local government officials issued out mask mandates and stay at home orders. This impacted everyone in different way. Everything ranging from businesses, social gatherings, and healthcare. Another place we saw immediate changes was educational systems across the United States. Students everywhere were forced into virtual learning instead of learning in a traditional classroom setting. This immediately impacted students and teachers, especially in the K-12 classrooms. Even though things are starting to slowly move back to normal, schools are still feeling the repercussions of the pandemic.
71.4% of students stated that learning in the traditional classroom was more motivating than online learning (Adnan, 2020). Some students find motivation to engage in school activities as a challenge in itself, the pandemic and the health and safety protocols have made it even harder for students to sustain academic motivation towards school activities like attending online classes, studying, and doing homework (Mason, 2020). Different from higher education, where students are more mature and a lot more students are actually signing up to take online courses. K-12 students are accustom to working along side their peers in a traditional classroom. Due to restrictions from the pandemic there wasn’t much of a choice, but asking K-12 students to shift to online learning is a huge deal. These changes effected students engagement and caused a lack of motivation in a lot of students.
Lumsden (1994) describes motivation as the learners’ willingness to participate in the learning process. Dörnyei (2015) states that the lack of motivation will hinder individuals even if they’re skilled and have some of the most outstanding abilities, and on the other hand possessing motivation will make up for the lack of important skills. Motivation goes hand and hand with student engagement, and it’s the first step in creating a successful learning environment. Understanding this, we also have to understand all student’s motivation stem from different places. According to Reiser & Dempsey 2017, Motivation can either be extrinsic (grade-oriented) or intrinsic (self-fulfillment).
2. Overview of the Case:
In Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) the pandemic and transitioning to online school sent parents, students, teachers, and administrators into a frenzy. I experienced this first hand because my mother is an assistant principal at Berkmar Middle School. Many problems arose from the transition. Berkmar is a Title 1 school, so this means the school district receives extra funding because the high poverty rates in the community (Georgia Cyber Academy, 2021). With them being Title 1, students are already at a slight disadvantage due there lack of resources at home. Including things like laptops, internet access, and even lack of communication from parents to teachers. These are the main resources needed to be successful as online student.
With the lack of resources making it hard on students and teachers, it became a big discussion on should students get promoted to the next grade level, and should the promotion criteria be adjusted. According to the GCPS Middle School Promotion Criteria Chart, “For students to earn promotion to the next grade they must pass five out of six the their courses, two of those courses being Mathematics and Language Arts. If students fail to meet these requirements they will be assigned to summer school.” Unfortunately that year at my mother’s school over 40% of her 8th grade students were not meeting the promotion requirements. Students were simply not logging onto classes and not completing their work.
Poor performance from the 8th graders led to major concerns for the Berkmar school district as a whole. There was no one you could just solely put the blame on for what was happening. Nobody predicted the pandemic to hit and impact our world the way it did. Majority of the students motivation was completely gone due to the circumstances. The big question my mom and her fellow coworkers had to ask themselves was, how can we restore our students motivation despite the pandemic and lack of resources for online learning.
3. Solutions Implemented:
Berkmar Middle School implemented a variety of different solutions for students lacking motivation due to the lack of resources for online courses. They started allowing their students to come pick up portable wifi hotspots, Mini Google Chrome Books, or even paper assignments which was very rare because of the safety protocols. With Berkmar being a Title 1 school as I mentioned earlier, GCPS provided them the funding to allow them to do this for their students that were in need. Providing them with these resources was huge, because it gave the kids a sense of hope. This was a great plan of action that they put in place, but there are still other solutions that could have been implemented as well.
According to an article by Blackboard Blog, there are five useful strategies to motivate online learners. These strategies consist of 1. rewarding students’ successes, 2. allowing students to monitor their own progress, 3. create virtual office hours for students so that they can interact with peers and teachers, 4. help students set obtainable goals in the course, and 5. allow students to participate in building the curriculums.
Another way to motivate your students in a online course is really getting to know a lot about them, and the way that they learn. This way you can implement the right kind of lessons and coursework to keep them engaged an active. You don’t want to lose the attention of your students during a class session online, it’s hard to reel them back in. I know this from my own personal experience doing online classes. Also understand extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, if you can understand what exactly motivates your students it’s easier to implement the necessary things into the course. A side note on motivation, for the long-term development of young students, developing intrinsic motivation is the most important factor in student learning, particularly in K-12 schools (Chiu, 2021).
The most important step to improving the student’s motivation is first making sure an providing them with the correct resources to be successful in the online setting. If they don’t have the proper resources then they’re already at a disadvantage, so motivation is going to be lacking automatically. Next is structuring the course in the way that best fits the type of learners in the classroom. To do this you must understand your leaners and what gets them motivated. Also the five strategies that I mentioned from the Blackboard Blog can be extremely impactful.
4. Outcomes:
According to my mother, assistant principal at Berkmar Middle School, the percentage of 8th grade students not meeting the promotion criteria dropped from 45% to 15% after implementing the proper resources. These results show that simply providing students with the correct resources can raise student motivation. Whether there motivation was grade-oriented, promotion, or actually interested in learning the content it gave them the extra drive to their grades where they need to be.
After that semester during the pandemic, GCPS gave out a survey for students, teachers and parents. This survey called the Digital Learning Survey gave us amazing insight and results about the online classroom setting. 95% of students that took the survey stated that they used a Chromebook to get work done and log on to class. 88% of students said they had multiple teachers give them some type of positive feedback. This is big because positive feedback can be that extra motivation that a student needs. One GCPS faculty member stated that, ” I was impressed with the level of involvement for the majority of students I taught.” Another member said ” Our grade level and administrative staff collaborated together to succeed. We were problem solvers and came up with working solutions to support students.” Reading this statement goes hand and hand with the situation at my mother’s school. Her and her fellow employees did exactly this when figuring out how to best meet their students needs in the online environment. Berkmar faculty and staff members also realized that a very small group of their students actually reacted better to online learning environments. They put up better results in the online classroom setting rather in-person.
Even though results turned out positive for the most part. It was still some failures and things that didn’t work out with the online classroom. For example, with my mother’s school it was still some student’s that they could not reach and had to repeat the same grade the following year. Most these students had an extreme lack of motivation that was going to hinder them whether the class was online or in person.
According to an article by Ian McCarthy, many students said “The workload is a lot more in online courses, and it takes longer to grasp all the information which makes it even harder to complete the assignments.” This is something that I’ve heard about a lot of online classes. Teachers often forget that some students learn at a different pace than others. Some catch on quicker, and some catch on a little slower. Also depending on the subject, a student that usually catches on fast my catch on slower and vice versa. Being in a online class where the workload is hard to manage can cause students to loose motivation when they can’t grasp all the information like their peers. This is why virtual office hours should held for this exact reason.
5. Implications:
The pandemic taught us a lot in many different aspects of life. Especially in the K-12 educational system. We seen how important motivation is for students in the online classroom setting. A lack of motivation can hinder any student, no matter what kind of abilities they are equipped with. As instructors it is important to understand what motivates each of your students individually, and then how to motivate them. Preferably intrinsic motivation is best for developing students long term, but if a student does not have that intrinsic motivation, this is where extrinsic motivation comes in.
Studies and results show that there are many different ways to improve motivation in the K-12 online classroom setting. Simply provided them with the resources they need can be helpful. Then incentives, positive feedback, help them set goals, creating virtual office hours, and etc. One main lesson learned is to be better prepared to transition to a online classroom. I think we all have learned that from the pandemic. If we are better prepared them it won’t be as much as a frenzy when students have to transition, and there motivation to learn and succeed won’t waiver.
Though the pandemic was unexpected and tragic it gave us a lot of insight on how to structure online courses moving forward. It’s so many things you can take away from it as a student, teacher, or administrator. The goal is to reach every student in online courses, and to either increase or maintain their motivation. But being realistic you’re not going to be able to reach every student. You can only implement a well structured plan and proper resources to reach as many students as you can.
References
Cardullo, V., Wang, C.-h., Burton, M. and Dong, J. (2021), “K-12 teachers’ remote teaching self-efficacy during the pandemic”, Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 32-45. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIT-10-2020-0055
Chiu, T. K. (2021). Student engagement in K-12 online learning amid covid-19: A qualitative approach from a self-determination theory perspective. Interactive Learning Environments, 1-14. doi:10.1080/10494820.2021.1926289
Collier, L. (2015, June). Grabbing students. Retrieved December 06, 2021, from https://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/06/grabbing-students
Factors influencing EFL students’ motivation in … – eric. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1286748.pdf
Gwinnett County Public Schools 2021-22 … – gcpsk12.org. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://www.gcpsk12.org/cms/lib/GA02204486/Centricity/Domain/13576/2021-2022%20Calendar.pdf
Reiser, R.A. & Dempsey, J.V. (Eds.) (2017). Trends and issues in instructional design and technology. (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
Results from Spring 2020 Digital Learning Days Survey. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://publish.gwinnett.k12.ga.us/gcps/wcm/connect/ce9d31bb-377e-427c-a3f8-7dd8b943e512/Digital-Learning-Survey-Results-June-18-2020-BOE-Meeting.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID=nbezwrm
Student engagement: 5 strategies to motivate the online learner. (n.d.). Retrieved December 06, 2021, from https://blog.blackboard.com/student-engagement-strategies-motivate-online-learner/
Title I program. (n.d.). Retrieved December 06, 2021, from https://www.georgiacyber.org/parents/title-i-program#:~:text=Title%20I%20is%20a%20program,and%20student%20academic%20achievement%20standards
Turner, S. (n.d.). Many students lack motivation for online learning. Retrieved December 06, 2021, from https://granitebaytoday.org/distance-learning-presents-challenges-to-student-education/