Students should take pride in their efforts. Encourage celebration of successes and help students grow when they struggle. 

Self-belief is essential for student success. As they grow as learners, they take pride in their knowledge and become more active participants in their learning process. 

As students progress through their program, they have to take more responsibility for their learning. They become better learners. We set them up for their learning success, but they put their knowledge and skills to work and grow. 

Students have to take responsibility for their own learning. I know we use a blended learning curriculum, which makes students learn on their own time and then apply it in the classroom/clinical setting. We set them up for the learning by providing the necessary information to them, but they have to own it and take responsibility to actually learn the material. 

Providing an atmosphere to encourage and engage students can positively impact learning and retention of students. Being enthusiastic and pleasant can be an added bonus to help engage students. Remember, students come from different backgrounds in life and learning and we have to find ways to help them be successful.

There are many factors that come into play to help maintain student retention. Most commonly, students fear other factors than the class itself. Being able to help students learn by understanding these factors improves retention for schools. 

Reply to Janet Smith Stasiak's post:I definitely agree with this. I feel like I have used things for the pizzazz factor and now I am thinking I have commited a copywrite infringement.

It is the instructor's responsibility to review the necessary reasons for copyright use and therefore their responsibility to request permission to use the copywrited material.

One thing that I learned was that when the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, Section 107, was legislated, "It is known as the fair use section, and educators since then have been using it as a means to obtain and use copyrighted materials."

Of course instructors have to consider the rights of fair use. 

A valuable resource for documentation on copyright law from the U.S. federal government can be found at www.copyright.gov. The United States Copyright Law of 1976 was designed to protect the rights of owners and authors of original works.

I have always been coached to avoid plagarism, but I think it is often easily forgotten that online pictures and quotes can be easily misused without copyright permission.