Tools for improving student motivation used during online teaching in higher education due to Covid-19

Abstract

A study has been conducted to investigate which tools teachers in higher education have chosen to use to improve student motivation during the forced transition to online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Previous investigations have focused on the student perspective and response to the forced change to online teaching and learning. This paper focuses on the teacher perspective, investigating how conscious of student motivation teachers have been as part of this transition and which tools teachers have chosen to use to improve this motivation. A distinction is made between courses traditionally designed as online courses from the outset and those where the change to online teaching was specifically made due to mandatory changes during the pandemic. The reason for this distinction is that we believe that courses specifically designed from the start to be online are typically more grounded in online methods than those where the change to online teaching was unexpected, rapid and often undesired. The study is based on a survey to teachers in higher education from different countries, with an emphasis on Sweden.