When the interest is not there....
Motivating a student is the hardest thing to do. It is not always easy to find the right bias to get their full interest and motivation. However it is by far the most challenging endeavour.
It's always difficult to motivate students; especially when you have 30 different personalities to try to accomodate too. I find that the best approach to take is to find something that the majority of the class has a high interest in and focus your teaching around that. Most students will buy in if the majority of the class is interested!
When the interest is not there I usually take the time to gather the students together for a small meeting of the minds this allows us to join together as one unit and leads us to a topic of interest that we all feel motivated by. This works for me as well as the students, eventully leading us to the subject matter of the day. Thats when the fun begins, as we go from lecture to lab, or vice/versa.
Hi Julie,
Good strategy to engage students that are really not engaged in the learning the content of your course. I teach such a course myself. My course is required for state certification and is mandatory. I enjoy teaching the course because it requires that I use all of my teaching skills to keep the attention of the students. This means that the course is never boring to me even though I teach several sections of the course over and over again. By trying different approaches the course is new to me each phase.
I wish you the best with your efforts. Sounds like you are doing great.
Gary
There are many times when a student is taking a class that is required for their degree completion and which is of not interest to them. I find that when I teach a theory course- "why do we need theory? why can't we just do our work?" In this instance it is very difficult to motivate them, other than for the need for a good grade! I try to help by breaking down the "boring" parts and apply it to their own work environment, showing them it is part of what they are already doing. If they realize they already have part of the puzzle, and simply need to look at the picture in a different format, they feel accomplished and can concentrate on the topic.
I agree but I do not have alot of problem due to I have a great time with my students and our class is always fun but I do change things around if need to . I have them on lab and then we do lecture with there trainning aids in front of them which keeps them involved.
