Twelve tips to stimulate intrinsic motivation in students (summary)

Twelve tips

• Twelve tips to stimulate intrinsic motivation in students through autonomy-supportive classroom teaching derived from Self-Determination Theory
• Kusurkar, R., Croiset, G., & Ten Cate, O. (2011). Twelve tips to stimulate intrinsic motivation in students through autonomy-supportive classroom teaching derived from Self-Determination Theory. Med Teach, 33(12), 978-982.

This article provides 12 tips that can be used to stimulate intrinsic motivation:

1. Identify and nurture what students need and want.

Make an attempt to understand what students want out of the teaching sessions and structure the format of teaching around these needs. This is to make the learning more relevant, intriguing and interesting, thus stimulating among the students a genuine interest in the subject, hence intrinsic motivation.

2. Have students’ internal states guide their behaviour.

Structuring the lesson around the needs of the students helps to create a state of self-determined motivation (internal state) among these students. When genuinely interested, students will invest time an effort into learning about a particular topic, and are more likely to come to class prepared and participate in discussions.

3. Encourage active participation

Encourage active participation makes learning more autonomous, and gives educators an opportunity to provide feedback. Group work, seating arrangements, and class discussions are all methods that can stimulate active participation

4. Encourage students to accept more responsibility for their learning

Having responsibility for their own learning has been shown to stimulate students’ motivation. This can be achieved by ending the session with further questions to be discussed in the next sessions and allotting some ‘nice to know’ topics for self-study.

5. Provide structured guidance

This calls for a delicate balance between letting the students take the lead and bringing in own expertise in the subject matter whenever required. Contrary to simply leaving students to do everything themselves, providing structured guidance involves being present and nudging students onto the correct path when they stray too far away from the point of a particular lesson.

6. Provide optimal challenges

Providing challenges to students not only gives them a sense of autonomy and competence, but also allows them to develop skills that will be valuable in the long run, such as presenting to an informed audience. Students should not be forced to take part in these activities, but participate out of their own volition. It would also mean giving students, who are not well-prepared for such challenges, more time to gather their courage and mentally prepare for them.

7. Give positive and constructive feedback

Giving timely positive and constructive feedback shows the gap between the current and the desired understanding, rather than the task of learning (ie, as provided by grades.) The manner of giving feedback should be non-threatening, directed towards learning issues and not towards the person, phrased in a positive way and giving tips for improvement in the future. Giving positive feedback does not mean that corrective feedback for errors made should not be given. It rather means that this feedback should be phrased as ‘points for improvement’, thus isolating it from any negative connotations. The tone of the feedback is equally important. Points for improvements should be presented as ‘suggestions’ and not as ‘directives’

8. Give emotional support

Emotional support entails creating a warm, positive and sharing atmosphere in the classroom where students feel safe to express their feelings, doubts and questions. Fostering such a relationship with a teacher is likely to increase interest for the subject being taught, which in turn, increases internal motivation.

9. Acknowledge students’ expressions of negative effect

Like everyone else, students have the desire and need to be heard, especially when giving negative feedback about a particular learning situation. Ignoring students' negative feedback will likely cause the students to lose all interest in further teaching sessions. It is important to not be judgemental when students communicate their feelings.

10. Communicate value in uninteresting activities

Not all activities done in class will be interesting, but they are often done for a reason. Boring activities often cause certain students to feel negative and students who are not motivated can have a negative effect on the motivation of other students in the group. Therefore, it is important to explain the relevance of these uninteresting activities. If the students understand the value of studying boring subjects for their future careers, they will autonomously choose to study it, thus shifting their motivation towards the self-determined motivation, rather than it being controlled by the teacher’s expectations.

11. Give choices

As with many of the aforementioned tips, giving students a choice in their education promotes a sense of autonomy. Being involved in some of the planning helps the students feel closely related to the course and enhances their intrinsic motivation.

12. Direct with ‘can, may, could’ instead of ‘must, need, should’

Using this word choice allows students to feel like they have a choice, and thus, autonomy, in what they do. Phrasing comments and suggestions in a way that is not binding on the students, but gives them the chance to decide for themselves, is very effective in enhancing their intrinsic motivation.