motivating students Archives

Three Teachers, One Challenge: Improving Student Engagement with Course Readings

Lonna Summers Rocha, Carrie L. La Voy, and Steven H. White February 16, 2026

We often hear faculty complain that students are not reading the course material. Studies consistently report low rates of reading compliance across disciplines, with students citing time pressures, unclear purpose, perceived irrelevance, and weak accountability structures as reasons for skipping assigned materials (Hoeft, 2012; Brost

Building Relationships to Better Motivate Students

Patrick F. Larue March 4, 2024

You know the feeling. We all deal with it.

Walking into a classroom the first day of a new semester, you’re thinking about it all: What are going to be the first words out of my mouth? What are these students thinking about right now?

Capitalizing on Motivation during the Semester

Holly S. Hebert September 25, 2023

A recent TED conversation (2023) with motivation researcher Ayelet Fischbach on overcoming procrastination got me thinking about the ebbs and flows of each semester and taking advantage of the key moments during the term to help with student success. This came to life for

A Group Final Exam Opportunity Increases End-of-Semester Student Motivation

Heather A. Wilson-Ashworth May 15, 2023

With the end of the semester looming, how often have you begun class wondering where the students have gone? Does it seem like the first day of class had every seat filled, but now there are a lot more seats open? That used

Why Students Won’t Read—and What to Do about It

Chris Hakala August 15, 2022

One of the most frustrating things that can happen in higher education is that we assign students a reading that is really interesting and important for an upcoming class discussion. We then go on to design the day’s activities around the reading so that students

Helping Students Be Responsible

Mark D. Ogletree and Kenneth L. Alford June 6, 2022

An increasing number of students seem to struggle with meeting deadlines. Some students have a challenging time following instructions or assignment directions, while other students pay little attention to when or where they will be taking their midterm or final exams.

What contributes to a

Want Students to Do the Reading? Assign Tasks, Not Texts

Norman Eng May 2, 2022

A lot of professors assign readings as follows: students read a piece of text, respond to it in some way, and come prepared to discuss it in class. Yet over half of students don’t do the assigned readings, and often it’s because professors assign too

Mixed Memories of a Professor: Do the Ends Justify the Means?

Maryellen Weimer November 22, 2021

Vivid memories of a writing professor persist. I credit him with teaching me to write, and by that, I mean he got me seeing the unseen in my writing and recognizing rewriting as more important than writing. I also learned to take and deliver criticism.

An Incentive for Note-Taking

Maryellen Weimer June 15, 2020

Students take notes on an assigned chapter—one page front and back. In addition to these notes that preview the content, students prepare reflective notes that connect the current reading with other content and generate questions about it. Both sets of notes are turned in and

A Memo to Students on Required Courses

Maryellen Weimer August 26, 2019

This is a required course. To many of you it looks (and may well be) unrelated to your major and your interests. If it weren’t required, you wouldn’t take it. Moreover, it may be a course in which you’ll do things you don’t like to

motivating students