Adding Some TEC-VARIETY: 100+ Activities for Motivating and Retaining Learners Online

Motivation is central to all things human. Online teaching and learning is no different. In the early years of the Web, however, students experienced extremely dry online content, affectionately known as “shovelware.” Over time, learners were increasingly inundated by bland content and unimaginative activities. Worse, too often they accepted it as reality. In the process, online learning became highly lock-step and mechanized. There was no room for flexibility, choice, or creative expression of any kind. Unfortunately, most online content remains lifeless today. Legions of learners are interminably bored. Part of the reason is that their online and blended courses fail to effectively utilize the smartphones, tablets, and other wireless and mobile technologies strapped to their bodies or contained in their tote bags. At this very moment, tens of millions of learners around the planet are navigating through seemingly endless pages of their online courses. Unfortunately, most of these learners are swimming in this sea of content without much hope for interaction, collaboration, or engagement. The emergence of massive open online courses or MOOCs with tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of learners in a single course has made the present situation even more prominent and precarious. We propose the TEC-VARIETY framework as a solution to the lack of meaningful engagement. It can shift learners from highly comatose states to extremely engaged ones. Adding some TEC-VARIETY helps instructors to focus on how to motivate online learners and increase learner retention. It also is a comprehensive, one stop toolkit for online instructors to inspire learners and renew their own passion for teaching. Using ten theoretically-driven and proven motivational principles, TEC-VARIETY offers over a 100 practical yet innovative ideas based on decades of author experience teaching in a variety of educational settings. In this book, you will discover: • A wellspring of Web resources • 10 highly documented successful motivational principles • Hundreds of activities to motivate and engage online learners • Proven ideas on how to design interactive and collaborative courses • A realistic path toward meaningful and relevant online learning • Detailed risk, cost, and time guidelines for each activity • A highly researched basis for each idea and activity • Hope (yes real hope!) for engaging online learners