522-Factors that Keep the Student Motivated and Satisfied in Online Learning

Students are all learning, changing, and dealing with other factors in life that can be a challenge that can affect learners’ persistence in an online course. As Tina Stavredes stated in Effective Online Teaching Foundations and Strategies for Student Success in Bean and Metzner’s model of nontraditional, distance learning students based on student-institution “fit” stated, “…factors that affect persistence include

Academic variables such as

Study habits

Course availability

Background and defining variables such as

Age

Educational

Goals

Ethnicity

Prior GPA

Environmental variables such as

Finances

Hours of employment

Family responsibilities

Outside encouragement

Psychological variables such as

Stress

Self-confidence

Motivation"

All these factors can be a determent to online learning and completing a goal. Before I begin relating these challenges to my own online learning experiences, I want to also point out some concepts of the Rovai Composite Persistence Model (Rovai 2003) for nontraditional learners that affect online learning such as computer literacy, information literacy, and online communication skills, and again, those external factors such as “finances, hours of employment, family responsibilities, the presence of outside encouragement, opportunity to transfer, and life crises such as sickness, divorce, and job loss. “(pg. 28 Staveredes)

Although Rovia’s Composite Persistence Model brings up age, ethnicity, and gender, these are not important as a group or peer related entity in the online environment, but as they relate to the online learning audience’s diverse values, beliefs, and perspectives and can be a large influence on their motivation and satisfaction. In the beginning of starting my journey for my master’s degree in EDTECH, fear is one thing that had to be overcome. Every time before I sit down in front of the computer it can creep in, and I remind myself “I can do this” while I would sing the song by the band Oingo Boingo “Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself”. Originally, it was acquiring the skills to navigate the online environment and communication skills while learning new technology that had to be overcome. Then, since life can be ever changing, the external factors of family responsibilities, the presence of outside encouragement, job loss, finances, and my own sense of self-esteem have been major factors.

Last quarter, I had to take an “emergency week” and finish up work the next week as my job hours and responsibilities increased the prior eight weeks and got out of hand causing extremely late nights and an unorganized household. I was so grateful that the teacher had an “emergency week” that I could take as my hours decreased to part-time, and I could catch-up on my course load without degrading the quality of work.

Currently, as I type this blog post, I am in the mountains by Featherville, Idaho without internet service. I will be driving to an RV park to get it to submit by the due date. Although I have not created a blog before, I decided to take this risk because my cousin has had a major life crisis, and I wanted to go to be emotional support as I know how a major event can be devastating. So, to me, an online course polices can influence the persistence of online learners. It can be very difficult to integrate learning into busy schedules and other time commitments and flexibility can be instrumental in affecting this persistence and motivation of the student. Having the instructors support and ability to contact them, as in my first course in Google hangouts, could be detrimental to being that support that is needed to help persist in the online learning environment. Tina Staveredes refers to it as the “just in time” resources. “The more support you can incorporate into learning activities, the greater opportunity learners will have to gain additional academic skills in a reasonable amount of time.” (pg. 29 Staveredes)

Reference: Stavredes, Tina. Effective Online Teaching: Foundations and Strategies for Student Success. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2011.