Here are 10 ways to motivate your students while teaching online:
1) Keep students interested.
This is key. Students who are more interested, pay more attention, and are more motivated. You can keep students interested through experiments using Project-Based Learning (PBL) on a Zoom or Whatsapp call. In addition, teachers who share interesting and poignant stories also keep their students interested.
2) Set small and achievable goals to motivate your students.
When students have a goal, they are more likely to work towards the goal. Students need small and achievable goals of which they know they can succeed. Successful goals give students the confidence they need to succeed and motivate them to reach further.
3) Use play time to engage parents of the students.
Being at home all day tends to get boring, so if you, the teacher, can come up with games that parents and students can play during their play time, they will more likely be engaged with the classwork.
4) Motivate your students, by understanding their feelings, and helping them understand this difficult time.
Allow your students to vent and tell you how they are really feeling. This can definitely foster a closer relationship with you. The closer you are to your student, the more motivated they will be to complete assignments and reach goals. Also, if a student is struggling a lot, you may want to reach out to their parents. Knowledge is power.
5) Remind your students how vital learning and education is.
It is incredibly important to tell your students and show them that learning can happen anywhere and everywhere — online, outside, in the home, etc. Encourage your students to explore the world around them. NSTEM is committed to community and connectivity, so not only can you share ideas with other teachers, your students will have the opportunity to collaborate with like minded individuals. Read more here.
6) Communicate and cooperate with the parents.
Now that students are at home, parents get to spend more time with them. Parents have to manage juggling between their own work and their child’s activities. It’s important to foster communication with your students’ parents to ensure a productive working environment. Maybe you can set up Parent/Teacher conferences once a month with each students’ parents.
7) Be prepared for questions.
Your students’ parents may not be able to help their son or daughter complete homework or assignments. It’s a good idea to have office hours during the week in which students and parents can ask questions that they have.
8) Use videos to motivate your students.
There are so many great resources for learning online using videos, including YouTube and Khan Academy. All you have to do as a teacher is spend some time looking through the neverending content. Students love to watch videos, so why not give them something to learn through watching a video? NSTEM provides numerous resources for students and teachers from Kindergarten through college and even graduate school.
9) Use materials that are “short, clear, easy to understand and interesting” (Sutarto et al, p.134).
This kind of ties into method number 8, but most students learn in very small increments. You want to consider giving them new information in bite-sized pieces to keep them engaged. As we know, students’ attention spans are low, so the more recognition they get, the more motivated they will become.
10) Evaluate learning methods on an ongoing basis. 
There is no such thing as the perfect lesson plan or the perfect video. Think of it more as “progress not perfection.” If we keep evaluating the methods, we can always make it better. As the student needs an achievable goal, so do the teachers.
For more information on NSTEM and how we can help motivate your students while teaching online, click here..
Work Cited
Sutarto, S. et. al. (2020). Teacher strategies in online learning to increase students’ interest in learning during COVID-19 pandemic. Jurnal Konseling dan Pendidikan, 8(3), 129-137 DOI: https://doi.org/10.29210/147800
