Addressing the Affective Networks

We can attend to learners' Affective Networks by:

  1. Recruiting and capturing their interest
  2. Fostering self-regulation
  3. Sustaining effort and persistence

Capture Interest

You can capture learners' interest by providing multiple access points so that all learners can access the concepts or skill. 

Strategies

  • Help learners make connections to prior knowledge and experiences.
  • Share the goal or purpose of the assignment or reading.
  • Design material so it's relevant to learner needs and interests. 
  • Connect learning to the real world.
  • Provide detailed directions, examples, rubrics, and options for assignments. 

Foster Self-regulation

In order for learners to stay engaged in the learning process, it's important to help them develop strategies that support self-regulation. 

Strategies

  • Require learners to evaluate their work using the rubric as a guide. 
    • Ask them to assign themselves a grade for each criterion. 
    • Ask them to identify areas of strength and areas they need to improve upon.
  • Provide students with opportunities to reflect on their learning, and their learning processes, to see what's working and what isn't. 

Self-evaluation and reflection are both effective strategies to foster student self-regulation. 

To learn more about metacognition and reflection, review Promoting Student Metacognition Links to an external site. by Kimberly L. Tanner. 

Sustain Effort and Persistence

Capturing your learners' interest is a necessary first step, but it's also important to help them sustain their effort and persistence so they can meet your learning goals. 

Strategies

  • Provide opportunities for learners to develop their work.
    • Establish touchpoints so that learners can receive feedback on their work.
      • Require learners to submit drafts of their work.
      • Provide developmental feedback and require them to incorporate the feedback into their final submission. 
    • Require learners to conduct peer reviews and use the rubric to provide feedback to one another.
  • Encourage learners to make and learn from their mistakes. 

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