Motivation in Online Courses

Tony Danza (yes, that Tony Danza) was on the Today Show this morning talking about his experiences while he was a high school teacher for a year (no, really!). One of the things he said really struck me, and it’s one of the things that I’ve been saying for some time now, the real challenge with learning is motivation.

All of that way by lead in to what was to be a muraPOI link:

• Cracking the Biggest Barrier in Online Education: Motivation:

  “[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][T]echnology is no longer the primary barrier to the success of massive free online courses. It’s not even accreditation, though that’s a big one. The biggest barrier is motivation.”

  I don’t necessarily agree with the suggested solution, but I do think the author of the article, Walter Frick, identifies the major problem.

  (Via BostInno, August 17, 2012)

Motivation, and explicit, course-based support for it, is one of the things that interests me about the Mechanical MOOC experiment running beginning in October 2012. I’m hopeful that an explicit decision to “schedule” activities, with gentle reminders of maintaining progress (this is all dependent on the instructors in other massive-MOOCs), identifying and sharing pathways through the materials, coupled with online forums (typical of the massive-MOOCs) will be an important contribution of this MOOC to our understanding of supporting these massive (from 1,000 to 100,000+ student registrations) MOOCs. And that these techniques will be simple to implement and significantly improve the learning experience.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]