After sitting through a couple of workshops that used active learning strategies with varying success, I drafted the following guidelines for facilitators. Feel free to add your own to this list:
- Icebreaker activities are a great way to build community and allow students to get to know one another before implementing other active learning strategies.
- The activity should have educational merit. If the activity doesn’t apply to the course, ask yourself why you’ve included it.
- Students don’t necessarily know what they’re supposed to be getting out of an activity, so explain your objective to them and how it connects to the course.
- This one’s obvious, but give good directions. They’re essential for students to get maximum benefit from the activity.
- Make sure you leave enough time to complete the activity. Remember that some things such as readings can be done prior to the class, and some things can be done after the class (such as shared or private reflections, and graded assignments).
- Debrief after an activity. This can be done by groups reporting back to the class, an instructor-led discussion, or posting to an online discussion board after the class. Whatever way you do it, debriefing will help participants to identify common themes and pull everything together. You don’t want students to be so focused on the activity itself that they lose the point of why they are doing it.
- Think about how the activity could be scalable to larger groups. It’s pretty straightforward to incorporate active learning strategies with a group of 20; what if you have 200? Small group discussions are still possible, and give students the opportunity to manage the direction and focus of the topic. Debriefing will look a bit different when dealing with large classes. There may not be time for all groups to contribute their comments in a face-to-face environment, making an online discussion board an appealing way to debrief. If you want individuals to post comments, you could split the class into groups so that the numbers aren’t overwhelming.
- Think about variety. Split up a lecture by including a couple of activities, to allow students to think about the concepts and apply the learning. Also consider variety in your active learning strategies. Change things up a bit to keep interest high. There are a number of books that outline various active learning ideas; I’ve listed a couple below.
Bonk, C. J. & Zhang, K. (2008) Empowering online learning: 100+ activities for reading, reflecting, displaying & doing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Silberman, L. (1996). Active learning: 101 strategies to teach any subject. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
