Student Motivation and Online Learning: How do we do it?

For the first time in education history, school has been moved from a physical space to a virtual one. Due to the pandemic of COVID-19 and the mandated stay-at-home order, students were tied to learn from their homes. This caused a new foundation of online learning taught by the classroom teacher. In this new learning environment through very unprecedented times, there are undiscovered questions to the basic student learning concepts such as motivation and engagement. This teacher research delves into the search for possible solutions to motivating students in an online environment rather than the traditional physical school space. Motivation is defined in three parts; attendance, performance, and engagement. Attendance was the presence or absence of a student from the school day. Performance was the quality of the students’ work and representation of understanding. Lastly, engagement was participation and an active role in the learning environment or process. Motivation is a key concept to successful student learning and their educational experience. With a drastic -and unexpected- change in the educational format, this research provides critical data on how to motivate our students.