Keller's ARCS Model

In being a teacher I am consistently helping people learn new things. It is the nature of the position. Helping students learn the parts of speech and when to use a comma is slow going, but with enough persistence from both myself and the learner I can usually see the light bulb turn on. This year in my teaching position at Arvada High School in Arvada, Colorado I made the conscience decision to incorporate technology in every class that I teach. This would include two ninth grade English classes, one twelfth grade English class, journalism and yearbook. Not a problem in journalism and yearbook because the classes have already been set up to have an online component, but with my three English classes I really had to go searching and figure out how I was going to incorporate my field of interest of educational technology and incorporate it with the traditional aspects of teaching English. I began the first semester by having each of my students set up a blog and a wiki account. Step by step I watched my students begin interacting with the new technologies that I was introducing to them. I was actively taking them step by step through the process of how to organize and work each of the different sites. As long as I stayed with them step by step they seemed to do very well and were even excited about the technology they were learning; however, as the class went on I gave them many small tasks to do on their own and this is where I saw things beginning to crumble. Within a few minutes my students were getting frustrated and aggravated because they could not figure out the steps to do the task that I had asked them to complete. Students were no longer excited, rather they were shutting down. I realized the change in the room’s atmosphere and decided to take the reins once again. Looking back now I realize that what I was doing was using Keller’s ARCS model to regain control and raise the motivation of my students. I had to get their attention and show them how and why these new technologies will help them. Then I had to encourage them to try again and what I did this time that I had not done previously was be the force saying “C’mon you can do it!” “Perfect just like that!” I had to give my students the outer confidence that I had for them for my students to be able to begin doing things for themselves. And, once the students realized what the technologies could do for them and they had felt the rewards of success each student earned satisfaction and pride in themselves.