Mentoring and Motivation

Why Mentoring and Motivation?

Our experience and research studies show that Mentoring and Motivation are two of the most cost-effective ways for improving student skills and scores. Yet, public schools generally have no funds for these in their budget items. Hence, NEF has made it a policy for providing schools/school districts with funds to set up effective mentoring and motivational programs in every CyberLearning STEM academy. NEF encourages you to utilize our mentoring and motivation budget to mentor students as they start falling behind in the class, and motivate students, teachers and parents to work as a team o help improve student skills and scores.

Mentoring Students

You may use graduate students from local teacher colleges or universities or your teachers to provide afterschool programs using the online CyberLearning courses and online Homework Helper programs.

Motivating Students

CyberLearning Motivation Program provides a budget for student rewards. As recent research shows, student motivation improves engagement and grades. This program helps foster a level of excitement to inspire students to work hard to receive high scores. Combined with engaging interactive courseware, a culture of confidence and enthusiasm can be created around learning with proper motivation. In our motivational program, iPods, gift certificates etc. Field trips, books, trophies and other motivators are also options. You use your creativity to come up with a program that will best motivate your students achieve higher scores.

A few minutes of training from our team or your Academy Director can help teachers quickly see how to customize learning experiences for their students.

Motivating Teachers

The biggest motivation for teachers to use CyberLearning in the classroom is saving time. Is there a teacher who does not want more time? When the students are signed on to CyberLearning doing self-study, the teacher can use the time for grading, preparing lessons or ideally going around helping students individually, and also fostering peer learning by creating good student-weak student teams. Once teachers see the benefits of CyberLearning in terms of saving time and individualizing instruction, they can begin to use the courses with their students right away. A five-minute orientation will show teachers all they need to know about logging in, browsing the easily organized topics, customizing learning experiences for their students and viewing student reports – it’s that easy.

Teachers who use CyberLearning successfully can be rewarded through a program designed by the district and approved by NEF. Typical rewards include stipends, but printer ink is a recent favorite motivator! We can also make available professional development, particularly in areas of technology integration. Teachers have 24/7 access to all of our 3,000+ top quality courses for their personal and professional use.

A few minutes of training from our team or your Academy Director can help teachers quickly see how to customize learning experiences for their students.

One parent drove her daughter forty miles twice a week to her aunt’s house so that she could use the Internet to earn key technology certifications.

Motivating Parents

Often, parents are the most underutilized resource in our schools! Active parent involvement has proven successful time and time again, especially in India, China, Japan and other Asian countries, but it often barely makes it off the to-do list in our schools. Many of our schools have hosted Parent Appreciation Days for parents who work on CyberLearning with their kids, or hold extra Community Nights built around the fun activities in our free Parent Math Guide, designed with the U.S. Education Department, and containing 100+ fun math activities such as shopping, cooking and playing parents can do at home and after school with their children. NEF encourages schools to make our valuable online learning, especially in the job prep areas, available to parents. This would also help to make parents as role models of lifelong learning -- another great student motivator!

Motivating YOUR Students, Teachers and Parents What will work for your district? NEF will provide the budget and help you brainstorm the best ways to motivate your students, teachers and parents to make learning fun at school and at home, and improve student skills and scores.

Students can print certificates whenever they complete a level of CyberLearning.