Motivating Your Students to Learn

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Motivating Your Students to Learn

• Steven R. Abel, Pharm.D., FASHP
• Assistant Dean for Clinical Programs Bucke
  Professor and Head
• Department of Pharmacy Practice
• Purdue University School of Pharmacy

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Objectives

• List student needs which may impact motivation to
  learn
• Describe key concepts that impact student
  motivation to learn
• Recommend approaches to motivate the unmotivated
  student
• Identify issues and opportunities with lecturing

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Your Motivation????

• To go to Pharmacy School
• To go (or not go) to class
• To pursue postgraduate training
• To participate in the teaching certificate
  program
• To attend todays presentation

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Group Exercise

• How Would You Motivate Students To . . .

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Things to Consider

• Who is your student?
• What approaches would you use?
• What will be your metric(s) to monitor and
  document success?

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Document their clinical interventions in an
internet-based database, which is a required
activity for all students. Time is not routinely
allocated for this task during rotations, and
students know that there is a cash reward for the
most interventions. Last, the University
collects and reports information regarding its
engagement impact in various venues, including
the provision of patient care.
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Take advantage of opportunities to gain
introductory pharmacy practice experience
(without pay), because it will help them as they
matriculate through the curriculum
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Become involved in student organizations because
it will serve them well to be able to demonstrate
active organizational membership/leadership as
they progress through the curriculum and enter
into the working world
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Comply with institutional prescribing guidelines
for atorvastatin despite the fact that the
published studies support the use of simvastatin
for a particular patient
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Take their medications despite the presence of
two silent diseases that have not adversely
impacted the patients life hypertension and
glaucoma
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Make the most out of a critical care rotation,
their last clerkship experience, when the student
has accepted a job in a chain community pharmacy,
has minimal hospital experience, and will NEVER
be a critical care pharmacist
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Group Reports
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Additional Motivational Challenges - How Would
You Motivate Your Students . . .

• Through a lecture on GERD
• In a pharmacokinetics course
• In a journal club discussion
• In a drug information clerkship
• To write ANOTHER care plan
• In whatever else you might imagine!!

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Remember . . .

• Your students are not just pharmacy students in a
  classroom or on clerkship
• Your students are everyone you teach
• Sometimes your students include your boss!

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Reflect on how your favorite professors . .
.How did they motivate you to learn?
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Motivation Theory

• Learning and memory are tied to motivation and
  method of teaching
• Learning for students is continuous
• Campus hot-spots
• Least expensive groceries, Den Pop
• Teachers
• Could (?should) serve as learning facilitators
• Cant learn for your students
• Cant stop your students from learning
• Must motivate students toward course goals
• Increase value of learning
• Link coursework to student motives
• Shaped by socialization at home
• Shaped by socialization in school
• Shaped by experiences

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Student Needs

• Basic needs (food, water, sleep)
• Security
• Instilling fear is counterproductive
• Identify and resolve causes of insecurity
• Emphasize the positive
• Belonging
• Value as a group member
• Value as a human being
• Approval and self-esteem
• Praise
• For even small accomplishments
• Do not trivialize praise (be specific)
• Structure
• Syllabus
• Simple, clear instructions for completing tasks
• Structured plan of action for each
  activity/assignment

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Student Needs

• Approval and self-esteem (cont.)
• Reminders
• Past successes
• Future goals
• Perhaps track in class by individually in journal
• Portfolio
• Self-actualization
• Create anticipation
• Preview subjects
• Use trailers to motivate students to complete
  readings or attend class
• Creative structure
• Role play
• Game shows
• Teach other than via the norm

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Views on Motivating Students
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Motivating Students to Learn

• Begin where the students are
• Identify interest level on subject
• Identify previous knowledge and incorporate that
  into teaching
• Non-graded assignment during week 1
• Frequent short assignments
• Review transcripts, CV, etc.
• Review work examples

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Motivating Students to Learn

• Establish relevance of material/course
• Detail regarding importance
• Personalize examples of how information is useful
  related to major, career, life
• Relate course material to student interest
• Information links personal journals, group
  projects, linkage posters
• Show interest/enthusiasm for course content
• Create interest through novelty, variety,
  relevance

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Motivating Students to Learn

• Give students skills/knowledge to do well in
  class
• Orient to course
• Mini-lecture on key component
• Hold outside review sessions
• Evaluate course
• Involve students in course planning
• Determine topics of greatest interest/value
• Include optional or alternative units that focus
  on student interest
• Provide for varying learning styles

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Motivating Students to Learn

• Arrange learning tasks appropriate for student
  abilities
• Range of difficulty in assignments, exams
• Evaluate to show students what they have learned,
  not just what they dont know
• Challenge students with stimulating activities
• Set up student panels or identify course
  liaison
• Use classroom debates/discussions
• Create opportunities for role playing
• e.g., personnel scenarios, medication safety, WHS
• Oral presentations
• Case studies/simulated techniques

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Motivating Students to Learn

• Challenge students with stimulating assignments
• Give provocative assignments
• Do assignments for real world clients
• Give students field experience assignments
• Give assignments typical of the field
• Assign independent research projects
• Assign analysis of an essay/article
• Role play
• Give exercises for problem visualization/approxima
  tion

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Motivating Students to Learn

• Use test questions similar to those from homework
• Prepare students for challenging test questions
• Ask specific questions
• Balance the difficulty of test items
• Include an extra-credit problem to write a
  question
• Hand out study and review questions before the
  exam
• Hold review sessions before the exam
• Permit students to bring one page of notes to the
  exam
• Give two or more midterms and have the first one
  early
• Distribute answers to prior exams
• Give more quizzes than count

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Motivating Students to Learn

• Reward students
• Praise
• Positive comments
• Promptly return assignments, texts
• Recognize sincere effort
• Focus on continued student improvement
• Apply the Discovery method
• Use students curiosity
• Encourage student initiative by leaving gaps
• Draw attention to importance of gaps
• Pose questions that encourage analysis,
  problem-solving, creative thinking
• Encourage students to critique own work

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Motivating Students to Learn

• Promote teacher-student interactions
• Develop positive relationships with students
• Student feelings about teacher can help or hinder
  learning
• Keep open communication channels
• Respect your students and behave as if you do
• Encourage questions or comments
• Individualize instruction
• Be available for students
• Personalize interactions
• Be sure you have interpreted student needs/issues
  correctly

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Learning Styles
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Group Exercise Highest Retention Rate the
following from lowest to highest retention

• Teach others/immediately apply
• Discussion group
• Demonstration
• Lecture
• Audiovisual
• Reading
• Practice by doing

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Highest Retention

• Lecture 5
• Reading 10
• Audiovisual 20
• Demonstration 30
• Discussion group 50
• Practice by doing 75
• Teach others/immediately apply 90

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Active and Reflective

• Active and reflective learners
• Active learners retain and understand information
  by doing something active with it, such as
  discussion, application
• Reflective learners prefer to think about it
  quietly first
• Lets try it out active
• Lets think it through reflective
• Active learners like group work
• Sitting through lectures and taking notes is
  particularly difficult for active learners

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Hints for Active Learners

• With lecture-driven courses
• Form a study group
• Require participants to take turns asking
  questions, explaining topics
• Work with others
• Find ways to apply information

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Hints for Reflective Learners

• With lecture-drive courses
• Stop periodically to read/review information
• Do not simply read or memorize material
• Think of questions/application of material
• Write short summaries of readings or notes in
  your own words

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Sensing and Intuitive

• Sensing and intuitive learners
• Sensing learners like learning facts
• Intuitive learners prefer discovering
  possibilities and relationships
• Sensors
• Like problem-solving
• Dislike complications and surprises
• Resent being tested on material that has not been
  explicitly covered in class
• Are patient with details, memorizing facts,
  hands-on laboratory work
• Resent courses with lack of real-world connect
• Are studying to become pharmacists
• Intuitors
• Like innovation and dislike repetition,
  memorization, plug and chug
• More efficiently grasp new concepts
• Are more comfortable with abstract and
  mathematical information

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Hints for Sensing Learners

• Connect to real world
• Ask for specific examples of application of
  learned information to practice
• If sufficient examples are not provided, speak
  with peers to determine the same

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Hints for Intuitive Learners

• Intuitors like memorization and rote substitution
  in formulas
• YOU may be bored
• Ask the instructor for interpretations or
  practice-based connections
• Be cautious of careless mistakes, especially on
  tests
• Read the entire question before you answer

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Visual and Verbal

• Visual learners remember what they see
• Pictures, diagrams, flow charts, time lines,
  films, demonstrations
• Verbal learners remember more from words
• Written, spoken explanations
• Most college classes present little visual
  information
• e.g. Pseudomonas eye

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Hints for Visual Learners

• Find diagrams, sketches, schematics, photographs,
  flow charts, other visual representation of
  course material that will cement learning
• Prepare a concept map
• Link key points, enclosing them in boxes,
  circles, drawing lines/arrows between concepts to
  show connections
• Color-code boxes with a highlighter to relate
  topics

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Hints for Verbal Learners

• Write summaries or outlines of course material in
  your own words
• Work in groups

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Sequential and Global

• Sequential learners
• Gain understanding in linear steps, a logical
  building process
• Follow logical, stepwise paths to find solutions
• Global learners
• Learn in large jumps, without seeing evident
  connection until they get it
• May be able to solve complex problems but have
  difficult explaining how they achieved the end
  point

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Hints for Sequential Learners

• Most college courses are taught in sequential
  manner
• If lecturers miss steps, then ask to have those
  filled in
• Try to relate topics to things you already know,
  to enhance your understanding of the topic

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Hints for Global Learners

• Recognize that you function differently from most
  of your classmates
• Read the chapter first, to get an overview
• Immerse yourself in individual subjects and
  relate them to things that you know
• Dont lose your confidence in your ability to
  understand information and its relationship to
  other curricular content

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Team Learning

• Teamwork
• Assignments are often individual
• Increase teamwork
• Many students resist teamwork because they can
  perform better themselves
• Students should evaluate peer group members at
  least twice, early-mid project and at the end
• Should be fun
• Celebrate success

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Environmental Learning Factors

• Kinesthetic
• Some students LOVE to move as they learn
• Mobility
• Humans body is built to move
• Have students take short breaks every 20-30
  minutes
• Research has shown that it takes 30 seconds to
  rest and recharge the brain

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Five Key Dimensions of Student-Professor
Interactions
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Five Key Dimensions of Student-Professor
Interactions
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Teaching as a Catalyst for Learning

• Teacher as technician
• Structure coursework to review previous work,
  preview todays work, teach todays work,
  practice todays work, review todays work,
  preview tomorrows work (creates intrigue)
• Seek precise examples for key points
• Emphasize value of new information by linking it
  to previous knowledge or personal experiences
• Improvise

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Teaching as a Catalyst for Learning

• Teacher as technician (cont.)
• Give students breathing space
• Allow students to
• Ask questions
• Answer questions
• Share personal experiences
• Be sensitive to student learning patterns

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Teaching as a Catalyst for Learning

• Teacher as role model
• Share personal experiences related to subject
  matter
• Demonstrate passion for subject matter and
  teaching
• Demonstrate relevance of material
• Show students alternative ways to approach course
  material
• Be human

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Motivating the Unmotivated

• Helpful hints
• Students are increasingly older
• Apprehensive about traditional classrooms
• Perceive themselves outsiders when they consider
  the teachers world
• Uncomfortable with formality
• Lack study skills
• Struggling to balance life demands and college
  (at all ages)

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On Lecturing . . .

• DO NOT lecture on information which is printed
  and/or otherwise available to students
• DO NOT lecture on information which is printed
  and/or otherwise available to students
• DO NOT lecture on information which is printed
  and/or otherwise available to students

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Lecturing Tips

• Effectiveness
• Good at imparting knowledge
• Retention favors discussion
• May be more current than textbooks
• Information can be adapted and/or summarized
• Enthusiasm of lecturer impacts learning and
  student motivation
• Inject something that excites you into your
  lectures

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Improving Lectures

• Attention span is limited
• Increases from beginning to 10 minutes into
  lecture, then declines
• Variation increases effectiveness
• Pitch
• Intensity
• Lecture pace
• Visual cues
• Gestures
• Facial expressions
• Movements
• Use/demonstration via AV media

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Handouts/Notes

• Students perceive two purposes for notes
• Improved recall
• External storage of concepts which may be needed
  later (e.g., tests)
• Taking notes improves memory
• DO NOT provide complete handouts
• Encourage students to take fewer notes but on key
  concepts

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Lecture Organization

• Introduction
• Emphasize gaps in students existing knowledge
• Begin with case example requiring application of
  key lecture concepts
• Body
• Beware of overload
• Provide periodic summaries
• Ask for questions, but really ask
• Conclusion
• Ask for a verbal student summary
• Ask for written questions or comments but be
  prepared to provide follow-up

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What About Grades?

• For whatever reasons, grades are important to
  students
• Grades unlock many doors (e.g., Pharmacy School,
  Graduate School, etc.)
• Motivate student study toward grade versus
  learning
• Student performance increases with understanding
  that failure is due to lack of effort versus
  ability and setting reasonable standards for
  themselves
• Grades as a threat may produce avoidance versus
  interest

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So, Now How Would You Motivate Your Students . . .
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In Conclusion

• Establish, specific, challenging goals and
  expectations for class and course
• Syllabus
• Learning objectives
• Lecture to augment reading
• Help students develop a plan of action
• Student awareness is imperative for strategic
  instruction
• Apply knowledge
• Have student record progress toward goals and
  self-reflect

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Questions/Comments?