Students’ motivation: differences between online and on-site lessons.

Abstract

Concerns about the increasing of online teaching are spreading. The aim of this study is to provide a possible answer to a major research question: “Does the online teaching environment influence the motivation of the students?” In this thesis, it will be illustrated the main elements that were considered influential, such as loss of time, stimulus, teacher’s behaviour, all of which were collected using a direct observation of six classes of high school students in Italy. In order to obtain a wider view of the environment itself, it was asked students their point of view by submit-ting a questionnaire and the data collected through diary and a checklist allow to understand and describe the whole setting considered. At four months distance, it was then observed how the data gathered might have changed by submitting a second questionnaire to the students, being them the focus of this research. This case study is thus focusing on highlighting the main differences between online and on-site lessons, and as a matter of fact, it was observed that overall there are indeed some divergences. Moreover, during the research it was ascertained some interesting elements such as the evaluation of the student, which is seen to be influencing one of the main topics of the students language learning at school, and the particular difficulties of SEN students and how the context of online learning impacts them, given that among the six classes observed there was of one of them.