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Module 3: Activities - Active Learning Strategies

Overview & Aims

Activities: Active Learning in a Physical-Distancing Context - that's the full title we've given this module. As we've been talking with instructors, hearing from students, and reading scholarship (old and new) about teaching online, students and teachers both want courses to include opportunities for engaging with others, and for actively using course materials to practice course skills before high stakes assessments.

As a communication shorthand, we categorise these opportunities for engagement as active learning strategies, including, for example, Think-Peer-Share, Case Study, Concept Test, Fishbowls, Jigsaws, Small Group Discussions, Polling, Quizzes...

We learned from the Fall Planning Survey that most of you have incorporated active learning into your courses before and during spring semester. We also learned that many of you stopped using some of those strategies during the transition to spring and summer online teaching. Given this context, we've created a new module, with these new aims:

  • Participants will check their foundational understanding of cognitive load and active learning in reflecting on the Overview Resources.
  • Building on this, participants will make use of the Examples Resources to (1) clarify their understanding of specific active learning strategies, and (2) begin to identify strategies that could be incorporated into their individual courses.
  • Finally, we invite participants to imagine possibilities for an active learning strategy they could incorporate, using the forum to describe for and share with peers ideas for enacting that active learning strategy in their course.

Resources

Overview Resources

Examples

Technology Resources

Zoom Conversation Resources

Meet our Guest Teacher: On 27 July, our guest instructor for the 3:30 to 4:30 Zoom Conversation will be Ekaterina (Kate) Elgayeva (PhD, Organizational Leadership). The session focuses on the question "How might we facilitate active learning by drawing on key principles of emotional intelligence as part of supporting students in bridging cognitive and affective realms?"