If you’re teaching in STEM, you probably love your discipline. Teachers want others to experience the joy we have experienced as you marvel at the world through our discipline. Unfortunately, this isn’t always what happens. It’s not fun to stare out at a sea of laptops and blank faces and ask yourselves why all your skill and passion are seemingly falling on deaf ears. Student motivation is a vital factor in students achieving learning goals (Taurina, 2015). One major factor hindering student motivation is that STEM professors often fail to situate their class in the context of the larger narratives of science. Students don’t know why they should care. When students see how your class fits into the larger story of their major, it is easier for them to understand why it matters. This can help student motivation, and make it easier for students to apply domain-specific knowledge can be applied after college.
1. Your Class’s Story
Why should a student care about what you are teaching? This is a fantastic question. Asking why is a responsible question. To answer this question, consider how your students are motivated (Gauthier, 2013). Spend time reflecting on your students’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Are they vying for a big tech job, acceptance into a competitive graduate school, or more time with their friends? Think about the reputation of your particular class and where it is situated in the major. Why is this class being offered? We often think that it is obvious to students that our classes are important. But this is rarely true. Show them why these skills are important. One easy way to do this is to review high-profile job postings from companies with students and show them that your learning objectives map onto the skills required by employers your students want to work for.
After writing out common motivations and the value of your class in the context of the degree, consider how your learning objectives help students achieve their goals. I recommend spending part of the first class casting a vision for the story of your class. Communicate that this class has been arranged to help them meet learning objectives and why those learning objectives are useful in meeting their goals. Every good story has narrative progression, and if your students clearly see that the course schedule, assignments, and policies have been designed to help them meet learning objectives that support their goals, it is easier for them to be motivated.
Practical Tips:
Brainstorm common student motivations and communicate why your class is useful in the context of the degree program. Justify why these learning objectives matter by explicitly connecting them to student goals like understanding other major-specific classes, performing graduate school research, or landing and succeeding at their dream job. Present the class schedule as a narrative clearly showing that the course schedule, assignments, and even policies have been designed to help them achieve meaningful objectives.
2. Each Lecture Should Have a Self-Contained Story
A lot can happen in a week. I can remember sitting in a class five weeks into the semester, and not knowing why we were talking about this material. This is especially hard to avoid when teaching complex topics that require multiple weeks to explain. Missing or misunderstanding one concept can doom students to misunderstand future material unless prompt remedial action is applied. Even if your class is designed with a logical progression and that progression is presented persuasively, students can still lose the plot.
One way to help students stay on the path is to start and end every class with a short introduction and conclusion. You could think about each lecture as a chapter in a larger story. A chapter is a part of the book, but it is also a cohesive unit. An introduction allows the instructor to showcase the big picture for the day, draw connections between seemingly disparate topics, and review required prerequisite concepts. A conclusion can provide a big picture overview to students and highlight interdisciplinary applications and connections between courses. Introductions and conclusions can be great places to add active learning elements to a content-heavy class, which has been shown to improve long-term retention (Karpicke et al, 2007). Consider asking students to tell you what the big picture of the lecture was during the conclusion. You could use the Socratic method to guide them to the key takeaways and improve student ownership and recall.
Practical Tips:
Start class with a short introduction and review to help students see the narrative of the class develops. End class with a clear conclusion and assessment activity to build student understanding. Incorporate activities that require active recall and participation into introduction and conclusion to increase student understanding and recall.
3. Don’t Shy Away from Complicated Stories
STEM disciplines have complex histories; often, the theory presented in a textbook was once one of many theories explaining a given phenomenon. Sometimes the theories in textbooks have been disproven or partially displaced. Other times, these alternative theories are still being debated in research literature. But it’s rare to discuss these complexities with students. It is surprisingly common for a field or line of inquiry to grow stagnant until a widely accepted theory is displaced. Funding and non-scientific factors can play a role in determining which questions get asked, answered, and accepted. Few undergraduate students are aware of the historical and ongoing complexities of science. STEM educators have an opportunity to present the complexity of science, and we need to do this to prepare our students for the pressures they will face after graduating. Good teachers tell the history of their discipline (Bain, 2004).
Practical Tips:
Don’t shy away from examining the many factors that influenced technical development. Expose your students to alternative and opposing views to prepare them to answer objectives they may face in later research or industry settings. Present a common opposing position, or so-called best practices that you disagree with, and allow students to interact with that position.
4. Connect Content to Real Stories from the Research and Industry
Our dream as STEM educators is that our students would leave our classroom equipped to thrive in the real world as they build on the foundations of giants by making discoveries and building awesome things. But merely having technical knowledge and skills isn’t enough. My PhD advisor, Dr. Robert Marks, often describes an engineer’s skills as a tool. As your student progresses through their STEM degree program, they add more tools to their toolbox.
Hopefully, your learning objectives and class story have convinced your students that your class has given them new and valuable tools. But if your students don’t know when to use their tools, they won’t be helpful on the job. Sharing real-world stories or case studies can help students bridge the gap between your class and their next chapter. To do this, you will need to stay current on emerging trends in your discipline.
Practical Tips:
Share relevant industry and research case-studies from your professional experience. Invite other professors or professionals to present a relevant case study. Talk about how cutting-edge research or advances in industry build on this course content.
5. Invite Students to Write Their Own Story
Have you ever had a professor who made you feel like you had something valuable to contribute? I have, and this motivated me to attempt great things. Each interaction with students is an opportunity to encourage them to aim high and to cast a vision for valuable contributions they can make in the future. The faculty members who taught me at my community college, undergraduate institution, and graduate school have all done a fantastic job going the extra mile to encourage students to aim high both through their class and in personal mentorship. Here are a few of the creative ideas they used to help their students succeed.
Practical Tips:
Highlight the achievements of young people. Did you know that Albert Einstein was 26 years old when he published his paper on special relativity (“Albert Einstein, in his own words”, 2015). Incentivize students to attend and participate in the local professional society student chapter (i.e., IEEE-HKN). Invite local industry professionals or recruiters to attend the final project presentations. Give a lecture to an alumnus teaching how the things they learned in your class prepared them for their current work.
I’m the recipient of many great teachers who slowed down to invite me into the community of scholars. They worked hard to motivate me to apply myself and taught me how to navigate the professional world. I’m sure there were days when I was that blank-faced staring back at my teacher with an open laptop. But they persevered in their teaching and succeeded in motivating me to marvel at the world through my discipline, using many of the storytelling techniques on this list.
Jonathan Swindell is a PhD student at Baylor University in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He researches industrial applications of artificial intelligence and has professional experience working in engineering, spanning from government to big tech. He is passionate about helping students bridge the gap between the classroom and industry.
References
Taurina, Z. (2015). Students’ motivation and learning outcomes: Significant factors in internal study quality assurance system. International Journal for Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in Education (IJCDSE), 5(4), 2625-2630.
Gauthier, L. (2013). How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 14, 126. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v14i1.4219
Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2007). Repeated retrieval during learning is the key to long-term retention. Journal of Memory and Language, 57(2), 151–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.09.004
Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Albert Einstein, in his own words | NSF – U.S. National Science Foundation. (2015, March 20). https://www.nsf.gov/news/albert-einstein-his-own-words
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