Develop students’ active participation, collaborative skills and motivation in digital education contexts

Many researches have pointed out that after the pandemic student motivation decreased. According to a study of the Disability Research Centre of the UNINT - Università degli Studi Internazionali di Roma– over 40% of the 20000 students surveyed (age 14-18) declared that their motivation was lower than before the pandemic. Re-motivating students is then one of the most important challenges for teachers, and digital education plays a crucial role for this purpose.

But what is motivation? There is extrinsic motivation (when individuals are motivated by outside sources – rewards like getting a good grade) and intrinsic motivation (doing something doing because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable).

According to Larry Ferlazzo, educators should emphasize internal rather than external motivation in students. In particular, most researchers agree that internal motivation is nurtured by four elements:

1. Autonomy: having a degree of control over what needs to happen and how it can be done;
2. Competence: feeling that one has the ability to be successful in doing it
3. Relatedness: doing the activity helps them feel more connected to others, and feel cared about by people whom they respect
4. Relevance: the work must be seen by students as interesting and valuable to them, and useful to their present lives and/or hopes and dreams for the future.

Autonomy and competence can be stimulated by giving tasks that require the use of devices familiar to the students, such as mobile phones, tablets and computers. Furthermore, we can ask students to find themselves the most appropriate software to actually complete the task. Finally, the content of the task must be something that stimulates the student’s interest.

For example, students have been asked to create a slideshow about one of the topic included in the ‘citizenship’ curriculum. Students discussed with the teacher which topic to choose, according to their interests and sensibility. This discussion stimulated active participation and collaboration between students and teacher. One of the topic chosen was ‘slavery’, and the software used was Canva, which allows to build a team of people who can work together on the slideshow, while teachers can give suggestions anytime.

In another classroom of a Hotel Management school, students have been asked to show and explain one menu or one buffet.This task helped students to develop their competence, because the subject is well-known, but it has to be dealt with in a different way, not only with a practical activity, but with narrative and visual slides. Students also felt that this was an useful and appropriate activity in their curriculum (see point 4, Relevance).

Relevance is a key-point not only with regard to the curriculum, but also for school evaluation and exams. It is crucial that students know that their work will be evaluated and will have an impact on their grades;teachers then must explain clearly how these non-traditional works will be assessed. Furthermore, a slideshow is oftenrequired in Italy for the final examination in the secondary school. To show how relevance is important for students motivation, here is one slide, where the official document of the final exam is included in the slideshow.

This latest example also shows that external motivation must not be forgotten: students are doing their tasks for a purpose; the challenge of a digital context is to make students want to work, not because they have to, but because they can do it in a different and more familiar way.

Online Resources

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/creating-conditions-for-student-motivation-larry-ferlazzo
A blog article by Larry Ferlazzo about motivation

Definition of motivation
http://mmrg.pbworks.com/f/Ryan,+Deci+00.pdf
An academic paper about motivation by Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci

Italian research about schools after the pandemic
https://www.orizzontescuola.it/didattica-a-distanza-alla-quasi-totalita-degli-studenti-manca-la-socialita-calata-la-motivazione-nello-studio-e-rendimento-peggiorato-sondaggio-unint/
A survey about students feelings and opinions regarding online education during the pandemic and coming back to school.

Canva
https://www.canva.com/
Link to the online resource Canva.

20waysforstudentstousecanvaintheclassroom
https://www.themerrillsedu.com/blog-1/2021/12/3/20-ways-for-students-to-use-canva-in-the-classroom
An overview of Canva’s applications for students.