Learning Online: Motivation

With days and weeks merging into one, motivation to keep learning can dwindle. It can be difficult to stick to the timings of a school day without the regularity of a ringing bell. How on earth do you keep to a schedule?

The answer is the satisfaction of the learning process. Feeling like you are making progress in your learning is what will keep you engaged and wanting to learn. In practice, this means reviewing material regularly (even every day!) will be a great confidence-booster. Introduce time at the beginning of the morning to review what you learnt the previous day. By sparking those connections that your brain made the previous day, you will immediately be making progress and feeling positive. The brain likes to learn and the satisfaction of retrieval will mean you're spurred on to keep going with your day of learning new material.

As well as reviewing at the beginning of the day, plan into your timetable weekly reviews and end of the day reviews. It is necessary for your brain to completely consolidate information to revisit information regularly. Therefore, never think that you have safely ‘learnt’ material - your brain is constantly forgetting and you need to review in order to keep your brain actively recalling what you have learnt.

Top DON’T: just keep reviewing the same old material! Make sure you plan in your reviews exactly what you want to cover.

Top DO: mix up your reviews with different methods to make it more interesting and therefore memorable. Some ideas include; create a song or acronym, try teaching the material to your sibling or pet, try and visualise it creatively through drawings.

Want more?

Read our previous blog post on creating balance here

Read our next blog post on the absence of classrooms here

Read more on the retrieval practice of learning here https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn