M is for Motivation or How To Support Student Autonomy in Asynchronous Online Courses

Autonomy supportive teaching (AST) is a method for supporting and growing students’ inner motivation for learning. Rooted in self-determination theory (SDT), professors who use AST create classroom conditions where students’ psychological needs are satisfied. Students who feel supported experience their learning as more enjoyable, they achieve learning objectives more easily, and their learning is more likely to continue outside of the classroom. Instructors who use AST benefit, too, finding teaching more fulfilling. For detailed descriptions of AST in practice as well as supporting evidence, see Reeve [1] or Whitehead [2]. For an in-depth overview of self-determination theory, see Ryan and Deci [3].

Though hundreds of studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of AST in traditional face-to-face classrooms, only about a dozen have been directed at distance learning. It is my opinion that AST can be translated into online courses—even asynchronous courses where students and instructors do not meet in real-time. In what follows, I draw on my experiences using AST in asynchronous online courses. In doing so, I have opted to use an informal, first-person writing style.

The Strategies

AST has been operationalized as a set of seven distinct but interrelated strategies that, when used by an instructor, reliably increase students’ perception of autonomy support. In other words, AST leads students to be more self-directed with their learning and feel more comfortable and safer while doing so. The opposite of autonomy support would be an authoritarian environment in which students feel controlled and manipulated. In my experience, the strategies are related like beads on a string: if you improve your practice of one of the strategies, then you will likely also improve your practice of the others.

Strategy 1: Taking Students’ Perspective

Taking students’ perspective means thinking about course information, problems, learning objectives, and resources as though I am a prospective student. I ask myself: “What are my students interested in?” “What problems will they perceive as relevant to their lives?” or “What are they most worried about?” With practice, I find myself consulting my inner student with every course modification, such as the font I am using, the pictures and videos I share, course deadlines, grading scheme, invitations for feedback, and so on.

When the semester begins and students start logging in, I am grateful that I now have the chance to ask my students for their feedback directly. I ask, “What did you think of my video introduction? Was it too long? What might make it better?” And so on. The course gradually feels less like my own private creation, and more like a joint collaboration between me and my students.

Strategy 2: Inviting Students to Pursue their Interests

Learning objectives can be accomplished in a variety of ways. If, for example, the goal is for students to use one math problem as a model for solving another (such as seeing how a 20% tip was calculated, and then using that as a model to calculate a 15% tip), then any important math procedure will do. My first idea, as you can see, is to calculate the tip on a restaurant bill. But maybe students would rather know how to convert a recipe that serves four into a recipe that serves one, or whether their gas mileage is as good as the dealer has promised. Inviting students to pursue their interests draws on their intrinsic motivation. 

For example, a goal for one of my courses is that students will be able to use a psychological assessment tool and interpret the results. But I don’t make them all use my favorite health psychology inventory. I give them dozens to choose from, such as inventories for anxiety, stress, depression, autism, ADHD, dementia, quality of life, relationship compatibility, and so on. In all of those, they are likely to find something that interests them.

Strategy 3: Presenting Learning Activities in Need-Satisfying Ways

You and I have physical needs that must be satisfied or else we will die. But we also have three psychological needs that must be satisfied for us to thrive. These are needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The more that I can satisfy these three needs for my students, the more they will thrive in my classroom. (Note: this was tested in AST courses by giving students psychometric tests to examine anxiety, stress, depression, and psychological well-being. When students perceived that their autonomy was being supported by their teacher, anxiety, stress, and depression decreased and psychological well-being increased. The reverse occurred when students perceived that their teacher was controlling [4].)

To support student competence, learning has to be challenging but not too challenging. You want to navigate the boundaries between so easy as to induce boredom and so hard as to induce helplessness. Providing scaffolded activities allows students to locate their own optimal level of difficulty. I do this by offering a basic activity (e.g., “Take the inventory and report your results”) along with the option of going further (e.g., “Organize your results into a report following the model I have given you.”) There is always a higher level to reach for, and, as we all know as teachers and scholars, it is often up to us whether we reach for it.

To support student relatedness, students need to feel connected to you and their classmates. This is not easy in an asynchronous course. I believe that I have been successful at communicating to my students that I hear, understand, and accept them. I do this by inviting students to share their personal problems and concerns at the beginning of class by way of a letter to me. I respond to each of these individually and personally.

I admit I have not been as successful in helping students connect with one another. I think this is because I am myself a very private person, and I prefer one-on-one correspondence. For me, invitations to work in groups have always felt contrived—like I am checking something off of a list. But perhaps you are more at home creating opportunities for students to interact. Lead with that.

Strategy 4: Providing Explanatory Rationale

This strategy is as simple as it sounds. It means explaining why I am asking students to write their discussion posts, submit their reflections, or record a video introducing themselves. This is similar to a common standalone method called Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TiLT) [5], although I have found important differences between the two strategies [2]. By sharing my rationale behind the activity, students are more likely to climb on board with me. They will begin to feel as if doing the activity was their idea, even though it was assigned by me.

I have learned not all of my course activities had justifiable rationales. For several years I required my online health psychology students to complete a quiz for each textbook chapter. At 26 chapters, this was a lot of work. But what I was most interested in was their response essays, which were organized around possible problems in the healthcare industry such as whether healthcare was equitable or whether medicating ADHD children was ethical. My rationale for the essays was easy: “Clarifying your own position helps promote greater precision in thinking and communication.” I could not say the same for my quizzes. These, I later realized, had been assigned so that I could show my colleagues and department chair just how much work my students were doing. I didn’t actually believe they were beneficial beyond testing student obedience.

Strategy 5: Acknowledging Negative Feelings

I get some version of the following email from online students around 10 times every semester: “I’m SO CONFSUED! What even am I suppose to be doing?” I have to avoid my impulse reaction, which is to lead with criticisms of student grammar, word choice, punctuation, spelling, and principles of formal correspondence. This reaction, I realize, is my way of defending myself against the student’s criticism that I have been unclear.

If I can accept that my student feels confused, then I can avoid the inevitable email exchange where we take turns politely explaining how the other person is wrong. Instead, I respond, “Hi ____, it sounds like you are confused. I know that it isn’t always easy to find your way around a new online course, and that can be frustrating. Is there something that I can do to help?” That’s generally it. Crisis averted. This student was feeling helpless—just like I feel whenever the university travel authorization portal is down—and wanted to make human contact and feel heard. I can understand that.

I give the email example because this is how emotions are generally expressed in online courses. I occasionally get phone calls from students, but it is mostly the frantic and urgent emails that roll in between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. that make the hair on the back of my neck stand on edge.

Strategy 6: Relying on Invitational Language

Most coursework assigned by instructors is mandatory. Students are required to do all of it or face a penalty. Invitational language means introducing activities in a tentative way. This might include giving students the choice between multiple activities, or an invitation for the student to do something entirely different and of their choosing.

Invitational language is easy in the face-to-face classroom. This is because the instructor and students can discuss alternatives and reach a spoken agreement. When this occurs online, however, it isn’t always clear what students are expected to do. “Is it a requirement or not?” is what they really want to know.

I have found that it works best when I explain that a given activity is required. This is the opposite of invitational language. Doing so, however, will avoid confusing those students who aren’t interested in reading beyond what they have to do and when to do it by. In the description, I explain why I have chosen the activity (Strategy 4), and then invite students to do something different if they feel like they have a better way of accomplishing the objective. These students will typically reach out to make sure that my invitation is sincere, to which I respond with a rosy-cheeked smiley face and an enthusiastic, “Yes!”

Strategy 7: Displaying Patience

On a hike the other day, a friend asked me about my new book on autonomy-supportive teaching. In particular, she wanted to hear an example of one of the strategies. I said, “Autonomy-supportive teachers are patient.” But as soon as I said it, I was struck by how obvious it sounded. Of course, patience is preferable to impatience. My answer didn’t say much for the book.

But I had forgotten just how easy it is to be impatient, particularly in online courses. College students, who represent ages 16 to 60-plus, enter online courses with a variety of digital skill sets. Some are comfortable on a desktop computer; others are more comfortable with a smartphone. Still, others are uncomfortable on any sort of device. This is to say nothing of the learning system itself, such as Blackboard. I have been using my school’s online learning platform for more than 10 years, and I’m still learning about new functions that have always been available. (And you should have heard the complaints from faculty when we shifted our promotion and tenure portfolio submissions to our online learning system.)

As online instructors, we do our best to help our students navigate the online coursework no matter their skill or inexperience. Still, it is difficult to hear from a student who is frustrated that they cannot find the activity, resource, submission page, or deadline. This is where I must remember to be patient. I adopt my students’ perspective (Strategy 1) and recall what it was like when I couldn’t figure out how to pay my license plate tag fees online the first go around, or how difficult it was to make changes to my retirement allocations (and how stressed I felt when trying to do so).

Conclusion

These seven strategies combine into what perception psychologists call a unified gestalt. This means that the more you practice taking students’ perspectives and giving explanatory rationale, the more you will also be practicing patience and acknowledging negative feelings. In my experience, autonomy supportive teaching feels awkward at first. But just as we have learned to speak a language, we experience the impact these strategies have, and soon enough they become our default mode of interacting with students.

References

About the Author

Patrick Whitehead is a professor of psychology and coordinator of general education at Albany State University.