Motivating the career college student
What strategies do you use to help motivate your students enrolled in a career college?
Hi Justin,
You are showing your students the progress and development they need to make through the early examples you are giving them. At the end they can see as you say what the professionals standards are and how by setting the bar high they can be competing professionals themselves.
Gary
I like to show bad examples early on. I think the students need to see what not to do first so they can concentrate on how to create an effective design and not be worrying that they are way out in left field. When I compare the students work to good examples at the end of the project, during the critique, they get extremely motivated when it's apparent they created something very close in quality to a professionals work.
Hi Jon,
I think you are on the right track. You are showing them high quality work so they can see what standards are about for the field and the course.
Then showing them the lesser work and letting them critique it using their newly acquired knowledge is good.
The other thing would be to have some activities that the students practice on as they evaluate both quality and lesser work. Maybe make it a game with teams to help with the social development of the class.
Gary
We cover topics relating to visual media.
I try to show finished professional work that is good and critique / dissect. Hopefully there is some wow factor involved where they can see the best of what can be achieved.
I also show some poor work and have a disscusion with students to see if they can find obvious or major flaws. I asked how that might be fixed.
I tend to do this towards the end after we have cover some basic concepts.
Would you suggest showing some good aspects earlier on as a motivator?
What else might be a good idea from a visual standpoint?
I could not agree more with David's approach to making the content relevant to the student's life outside of the classroom.
I teach interpersonal communication, and am constantly browsing articles, and current event stories to find examples to use in class to demonstrate certain points. In addition, I make sure, through journals, that the students are able to related the course material to their own lives, which I find not only helps with memory retention, but also encourages students to build that bridge between theoretical and applied learning.
I like to bring real-life examples to lecture describing success gained through utilizing techniques and practices as taught in class. This shows them the material has real value, as well as lets them experience how the real world is waiting to test what they've learned.
Hi Gil,
This is an ongoing challenge for all college instructors. We want to be supportive but we can't expand the reading level of students in such a short period of time. This is why I like to have the reading level of my students assessed so I know the reading range that I will have in my class for that term. I can also plan some instructional supports for those student with reading challenges.
Gary
I have noticed a percentage of students, I suspect, have "failed" at high school or "been socially passed".
Reading during a three week course, which I have outlined in the syllabus, is a problem for example.
Not knowing what type of content you are typically teaching I can't give you any direct ideas.
In the field that I teach in the material is quite technical. What I like to do is find examples of completed projects of a high quality that I think my students would be interested in. Piece by piece I break down those examples and present the material in step by step chunks leaving them interested and excited for the next section. This allows the student to stay motivated throughout the process.
Hi Andrea,
There are many strategies that you can use. To target my response if you can give me some areas in which the students need to be motivated I will be glad to share some of those strategies with you. For example, do the students need some motivation right at the beginning of the course or does that need become important later when the students start to wear down in the course?
Thanks.
Gary
