Your learning environment extends beyond the classroom to things like your syllabus and ICON site. These aspects of your course can foster student motivation by demonstrating the value of your course content and by making course expectations and pathways for success as clear as possible. 

• Pique students’ interest in the major ideas of the course and demonstrate the relevance of the course to their future studies or careers, or the world outside the classroom. Consider listing interesting questions students will explore or skills they will develop in the course in the syllabus or allowing students to develop a personal learning goal for the course alongside your own learning goals.   
• Transparent communication can foster motivation because it can help students to see pathways to success. Your syllabus and ICON site often function as the official documents and records of your course, so ensure that your course goals, policies and structures are made as clear and transparent as possible in these elements. 
• Learn more about designing inclusive and motivating syllabi and see examples from other Iowa instructors by registering for the Inclusive Syllabus Asynchronous Workshop. 

Your course policies can motivate students to keep trying even through the possible frustration and friction of the learning process by rewarding positive learning behaviors and situating mistakes as opportunities for learning rather than risks that can result in deductions. 

• Use your policies to foster student autonomy by giving them choices over how they will engage with the course. For example, students who were given the choice over whether to count attendance toward their grade were more likely to attend class because they used it as a pre-commitment device, or a way to commit to attending and enforce that choice later in the semester (Cullen and Oppenheimer, 2024). Identify places in your course policies in which you can create choices for students in how they engage with the course.
• Ensure that your policies allow students to make mistakes without too much penalty. Students can lose motivation if they believe that they cannot succeed even with making a good-faith effort (Graham 2020). Building policies and course structures that allow for mistakes and growth is one way to foster motivation to keep trying. Consider strategies like weighing assessments later in the term higher than early assessments to signal that you want to reward growth; requiring students to submit only a portion of a total number of assignments (e.g., you must submit 8 out of 10 discussion forum posts); dropping the lowest grade of an assessment type; or offering a certain number of no-questions-asked absences per term.

Learning is a social as well as a cognitive process, and we can foster motivation to engage in those processes by helping students to feel connected to their peers and instructors as well as to the course material (Ryan and Deci, 2000). You can begin right away and continue to foster the classroom community throughout the term. 

• Nurture a sense of belonging with your students through strategies such as sharing your own experiences with struggling and needing help, normalizing help-seeking behaviors and providing students with support resources or providing opportunities for students to connect with each other. 
• Strategically use opportunities for informal connection to invite students as whole people into the classroom. Peruse this list of icebreakers created by an undergraduate Iowa student. 
• Co-create classroom guidelines or community agreements with students to set the standards for engagement in the course.  
• Be aware that engaging in the learning process may look different in different students, and students may therefore require more support in group learning activities. You can help students get the most out of group learning by providing more structure and transparency. Consider strategies like assigning roles or tasks to each member of a group, providing clear guidance on the tasks they should complete and the outcomes they should produce, monitoring groups and giving feedback on their progress, and choosing an assessment strategy for group work and outcomes that best aligns with your learning goals.  
• When incivilities or difficult conversations happen, help students to engage productively by facilitating difficult dialogues.  

Assessment can be a highly motivating component of a course because it can make apparent to students their own progress and growth. Rick Stiggins characterizes assessment as “the essential fuel that powers the learning system for students.” When students experience successes during assessments, they develop “a sense of hopefulness and an expectation of more success in the future...[which] in turn fuels enthusiasm and the motivation to try hard, which fuels even more success” (2005). 

• Help students engage in a process and see their progress by scaffolding assessments. Consider strategies such as breaking assessments down into smaller tasks, incorporating drafting and feedback processes, or asking students to summarize key concepts before applying them. 
• Give frequent, early, and positive feedback that supports students’ beliefs that they can do well. Giving feedback in manageable chunks that emphasizes learning rather than performance, and focuses on the task rather than the learner. Give feedback on the knowledge or skills that are most important for a given assessment (e.g., prioritizing feedback on content, argument, and structure in a first draft rather than on formatting that will be changed in future revisions). We all have a limit to the amount of feedback we can meaningfully incorporate at once so prioritize your feedback by addressing the aspects of a student’s performance that will help them to improve the most. 
• Provide opportunities for students to reflect on their process and give themselves feedback. Brief reflection and metacognitive activities can be used before, during, and after students have practiced a skill or submitted an assessment to help them assess their own progress and make plans for how to improve.  
• Foster autonomy by allowing students choices in the topic or format of assessments (e.g., creating a podcast or a Pressbook assignment rather than a paper, a TED talk-format, or a video submission rather than a presentation).   
• Make assessment activities relevant and authentic to students by designing assessments that reflect real-world applications, skills, and/or genres, and ask students to “do” the subject. 

The grading system you choose can foster both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Students may experience grades as extrinsic motivators when they function as rewards or punishment for meeting milestones, whereas a grading system can also foster intrinsic motivation by rewarding growth and process. Most systems will incorporate aspects of both, and you should thoughtfully consider when and how to leverage each type of motivator. 

• Create opportunities for students to get non-grade feedback. How will students understand their progress and the areas where they can improve outside of the grade scale? When will students receive written or spoken comments on their work, peer feedback, or opportunities to practice and identify their own strengths and areas for improvement, peer feedback? 
• Consider grading lower-stakes assessments on a pass-fail basis to encourage students to practice while decreasing anxieties about performance. You can still offer useful feedback for improvement to students on pass-fail assessments.  
• Reward growth by weighing assessments that come later in the term higher than early assessments, incorporating drafting and revision processes into some assessments, or by offering retakes or resubmissions on some assessments. Retakes are most effective when students are incentivized to put in a full effort in their first attempt and are asked to reflect on their attempt and to make a plan for what they will do to improve next time. Exam or assignment wrappers or error analysis activities can support student engagement with their process.