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or many centuries, education has been focused on the learning of course content, but the learning styles of the students have been ignored .

which identifies five main factors that contribute to student motivation: eMpowerment, Usefulness, Success, Interest, and Caring

mpowered when they feel that they have some control over some aspects of their learning

tudents need to see that the course is useful and relevant to them within the course and beyond.

those organizational qualities that encourage knowledge creation and dissemination

Differentiated instruction is an instructional theory that allows teachers to face this challenge by taking diverse student factors into account when planning and delivering instruction. Based on this theory, teachers can structure learning environments that address the variety of learning styles, interests, and abilities found within a classroom.

Online collaboration tools While Skype and other real-time collaboration tools make it easier for dispersed students to “get together,” Mandernach cautions against overusing synchronous tools. Instead, she says, you should encourage your students to take advantage of the many asynchronous collaborative tools inside your course management system or some of the new Web 2.0 tools. Some of her favorite Web 2.0 tools include: Tokbox, VoiceThread, Creately, Google Docs, and Teambox. These tools are relatively easy to use and help build a sense of community in the online classroom. They’re also another way to get students to buy into group work activities and using them makes the students more marketable upon graduation. “If you can use the collaborative environment to really bring them into your classroom and get connected to you and connected to their peers you’re going to see a lot of benefits besides increased test scores,” Mandernach says. “Many employers and graduate schools really view online learning as learning in isolation, and I think it’s important for students to show that they are capable of collaborative work — that they can work independently and with others.”

In the recent online seminar Online Group Work: Making It Meaningful and Manageable, Mandernach provided tips for adapting proven face-to-face group work strategies to the online environment. The key is to design tasks that are truly collaborative, meaning the students will benefit more from doing the activity as a group than doing it alone. Effective online group activities often fall into one of three categories: There’s no right answer, such as debates, or research on controversial issues. There are multiple perspectives, such as analyzing current events, cultural comparisons, or case studies. There are too many resources for one person to evaluate, so a jigsaw puzzle approach is needed with each student responsible for one part.

Rubrics appeal to teachers and students for many reasons. First, they are powerful tools for both teaching and assessment. Rubrics can improve student performance, as well as monitor it, by making teachers’ expectations clear and by showing students how to meet these expectations. The result is often marked improvements in the quality of student work and in learning. Thus, the most common argument for using rubrics is they help define “quality.” One student actually didn’t like rubrics for this very reason: “If you get something wrong,” she said, “your teacher can prove you knew what you were supposed to do!”

Information that conflicts sharply with what is already held to be true, and thus forces a re-evaluation of the old material, is integrated more slowly.

Adults prefer self-directed and self-designed learning projects over group-learning experience

Self-direction does not mean isolation. Studies of self-directed learning indicate that self-directed projects involve an average of 10 other people as resources, guides, encouragers and the like. But even for the self-professed, self-directed learner, lectures and short seminars get positive ratings, especially when these events give the learner face-to-face, one-to-one access to an expert.