How to Motivate Your Students

We as educators, of course, are looking for students to take an immediate interest in what we are teaching; we want students to absorb what we teach and have our efforts last far beyond a final grade. In the ideal world of online learning, all students are motivated-each is excited, enthusiastic, and focused on the class material, your every announcement and postings, and all feedback and discussion with other students. But the reality of distance learning is that this rarely, if ever, happens across the board. You will, in fact, always find one or more students whose motivation is just lacking. Without motivation in an online class that student will do poorly, and you'll feel pretty bad about it as well.