As expected, texting was the top activity of cell phone using teens with taking and sharing pictures, playing music, and recording and exchanging videos also being popular uses.

When educators leverage these types of informal learning by giving agency to the students to use their mobile technologies and by providing the structure and skills for their use within more formal educational settings, motivation and learning are increased.

fl ow activities have an optimal level of challenge— goals are neither too easy to attain, nor too diffi cult, for that indi-vidual participant. Optimizing challenge means that the participant has to stay fully engaged (not too easy), yet keep attaining enough small successes along the way to feel a sense of mastery (not too hard). Second, fl ow activities provide abundant, rapid feedback, so that it’s immediately clear whether one’s actions are having the de-sired effect. Abundant feedback encourages continued engagement as the participant quickly learns how to adjust his or her responses for better results

there is overlap between game play and engaged learning, with both being characterized by multiple attempts, the ability to overcome early failure, intrinsic interest in the “story” (be that course material or game narrative), and pursuit of a clear set of attainable objectives.

Similarly, when we praise and encourage students— which we should be doing frequently— we must watch our language, being sure to cite specifi c things we liked about their work and/or the effort put forth, rather than making global statements about how good they are at the subject or skill.

For one, students are less in-clined to work themselves into a frenzy of anxiety and avoidance when they are working with smaller, more manageable tasks. They also get more opportunities for feedback, which helps refocus them if they’re off track, and, if they are on the right track, gives doses of effi cacy- boosting encouragement.

Setting up lots of briefer conversations as well (e.g., weekly topic discussions) that open and close on specifi c dates is another anti- procrastination strategy.

but it’s possible to create an atmosphere of autonomy by giving students some choices and using wording that frames them as free agents.

Teachers and parents foster mindset simply by how they talk to students about their per for mance. Insidiously, positive comments can be the worst offenders for pushing students into a fi xed mind-set.

In the growth mindset, it’s effort, not inherent abil-ity, that is the main explanation for why some people succeed and some don’t.

One strategy is presenting grades in a way that is “informational” rather than “controlling”— advice that makes sense in light of the motivational power of autonomy and perceived choice.1

Positive habits, then, are a kind of behavioral “safety net” that can keep us from falling too far when we’re depleted.

Self- control is a limited resource— we can keep it up for only so much time before it fails, a psychological pro cess known as ego depletion.

If one thing emerges from de cades of psychology research on moti-vation, it’s that there is no single, universal motivating force. Rather, theorists concur that any given behavior on any given occasion re-fl ects a combination of multiple contributing factors.

And how are we supposed to translate that inspiration factor into a virtual environment— where we can’t rely on all the normal social signals to convey enthusiasm, approval, and encouragement?

what we are motivated to do, or not do— stem from a complex interplay between what we feel and what we believe. In par tic u lar, we’re motivated by what we believe about our own capabilities, how those capabilities compare to other people’s capa-bilities, and how our capabilities allow us to exert infl uence over the environment.

This tongue- in- cheek characterization shows how having a central mission powerfully motivates game players. Once they buy into the mission, the sky is the limit, moti-vationally speaking.

Online educators who use discussion boards successfully estimate that their interaction with students can be as much as three times the interaction with face-to-face students, and that peer-to-peer interaction is even many times more than that.

Allow for some flexibility in student-generated topics.You’ll find that it often makes good sense to set all major discussion topic areas in advance; however, you may also want to leave room (on the board and in your class schedule) for student-generated topics, which will increase motivation and support a learner-centered climate.