100’s of ideas in free TEC-VARIETY book

Motivation is central to all things human; unfortunately, much of today’s online content is not very motivational. On top of that, argue Curtis Bonk and Elaine Khoo, many college courses fail to leverage the motivational potential of the devices students tuck into in their backpacks every day. In their book, Adding Some TEC-VARIETY, Drs. Bonk and Khoo propose a new framework for ensuring meaningful engagement. The PDF version of the book is free, while paper and e-book versions can be purchased at Amazon.

The book is aimed at online learning, but many of the ideas and strategies can be used in hybrid or web-enhanced classes. TEC-VARIETY offers more than a hundred practical strategies based on ten “theoretically driven and proven motivational principles”:

• Tone/Climate: Psychological Safety, Comfort, Sense of Belonging
• Encouragement: Feedback, Responsiveness, Praise, Supports
• Curiosity: Surprise, Intrigue, Unknowns
• Variety: Novelty, Fun, Fantasy
• Autonomy: Choice, Control, Flexibility, Opportunities
• Relevance: Meaningful, Authentic, Interesting
• Interactivity: Collaborative, Team-Based, Community
• Engagement: Effort, Involvement, Investment
• Tension: Challenge, Dissonance, Controversy
• Yielding Products: Goal Driven, Purposeful Vision, Ownership

Dr. Bonk, a professor of education at Indiana University, is a popular speaker and author of The World is Open. Dr. Khoo  is a research fellow at the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.