Promoting Confidence in the Online Classroom

Overview

Students’ actions can be influenced, in part, by their personal efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 2000). When challenges arise, doubt and a lack of confidence could keep students from reaching their goals (Bandura & Locke, 2003). In addition to teaching the course material, caring instructors can play a significant role in helping students build and maintain confidence that can help students persevere through the challenges they will face on the way to graduation. Instructors can make the choice to help students cultivate confidence to promote academic and personal success in addition to delivering the subject material necessary for individual classes.

Why is instilling this confidence so important? A confident student can have a greater chance of persevering through academic and personal challenges to reach their goals (Bandura, 2000). Instructor presence, outreach, encouragement, and guidance on strategies to persevere through challenges can have a lasting impact on student confidence and success (Yeager & Dweck, 2012). Promoting student self-efficacy can have a positive impact on student persistence and academic performance (Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991). With a toolkit of intentional strategies, the desire to get to know students individually, and the determination to follow through on a commitment to student success, instructors who focus on maintaining and growing student confidence can have a positive impact not just on individual students, but on their institutions overall.

I teach the first class students typically take at my institution. The course is focused on academic and career success. Students in my class have ranged in age from late teens to late seventies. They all bring valuable knowledge and lived experience to the classroom. The majority are adult learners with families, jobs, and all of the other responsibilities that life brings. They are returning to school to make their lives, and their families’ lives, more prosperous. These students want to improve themselves and their situation in life. They are focusing their time and energy on the noble pursuit of higher education. I admire my students because they are not just hoping life will get better. They are committing themselves to taking actual steps to create that better life. Going back to school to earn a degree is an important part of that vision for them. As an instructor, you have the opportunity to play a special role in each student’s journey.

In teaching this diverse student population, I see that a lot of these students are unsure about their academic abilities. Many have attended college before, and it did not work out as expected the first time around. Life got in the way, resources were scarce, or something else happened that they could not overcome to earn their degree at that time. Knowing these individual stories can help you determine what each student needs, outside of the course material, to make this time at school different.

In addition to helping students understand the material, I am also mindful to help students enhance their confidence, as that will be needed to help them make it to graduation. It has been said that earning a degree is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Like a marathon, students need to train for strength and endurance, which is why helping students increase confidence is an important part of that training regime.

To have confidence, one must believe that something is possible, and that the individual is capable of meeting the demands to make the possibility a reality (American Psychological Association, n.d.). Instructors, if they make the personal commitment to do so, can play a critical role in helping students maintain and increase confidence. A personalized approach to student communications can improve self-esteem and help learners keep this confidence and motivation high for themselves in later courses (Macaskill, 2013).