How Can Active Learning Be Achieved BYDISTANCE

How Can Active Learning Be Achieved BYDISTANCE

This page contains some basic ideas on how you can implement active learning using synchronous online classrooms such as ELive. These are just starting points.

What ideas do you have for making your online classroom active? Please share your ideas in the faculty forum on the left.

1.  The Guided Lecture

Using ELive, the moderator “Application Shares” his recorded lecture for 10 to 15 minutes. He asks the students not to take any notes, just to listen. Once done, the students are given five minutes on their own for writing what they learned and remembered. Then, the students are put in “Break Out rooms” in order to elaborate and clarify the material and to make a meaning of what they learned. Students learn best when they learn from each other!

2.  Lectures

In the following website: Research Summaries, there are two interesting articles:

1. Talk six minutes less and student learn more!

(Ruhl, K. L., Hughes, C. A., & Schloss, P. J. (1987, Winter). Using the pause procedure to enhance lecture recall. Teacher Education and Special Education, 10, 14–18)

The results of this research show that the students’ ability to retain information falls off substantially after 10–20 minutes, hence it would be more efficient to have shorter lectures, use the pausing technique in order to give time to reflect on their own learning (individual/group) and give students three minutes at the end of the lecture to do the free recalling (write down everything they remember from the lecture). These techniques seem to work!

2. How to make lectures more clear

(Chilcoat, G. W. (1989). Instructional behaviors for clearer presentations in the classroom. Instructional Science, 18, pp. 289–314)

Understanding allows students to retain, recall and apply material in other circumstances.

Chilcoat’s synthesis of the research suggests the following: Provide a preview of information prior to an explanation, Organize information within a step-by-step lesson sequence, Assess student learning when information is being given, Signal transitions between information, Use multiple examples to illustrate information points, Stress important points during explanation, Provide for brief pauses at appropriate times during the lecture, Eliminate additional unexplained content nonessential to current explanation, Review information frequently.

More details are found on the website provided above. All these techniques are applicable during an ELive session. Good Luck!

3.  Role Playing

History example:

The site: “Thinking History” provides activities that require history students to think, question and participate. That’s why it’s called Thinkinghistory, not regurgitating, rote-learning, passive history.

A quote from the site: “Many years ago I tried a Saxon village simulation with first year undergraduates, just for four weeks at the beginning of their course. I was a little disappointed by the outcomes at the time. Two and a half years later, after graduation, I discovered that nearly all of them could remember the names and roles that had had in the simulation, who other people were and some of the issues they had had to deal with”

In this site, Ian Dawson tells us about the 4 broad categories of the activities: Enactive representation, Hot-seating, Group role-plays and Physical diagrams. He talks about the benefits of active learning in a history class, examples of the different activities, and even engaging students in role playing that involves debates, by creating a tension between the character and the students. Very interesting site indeed!

Arabic Language example:

The moderator takes the role of a native/local person in an Arabic speaking country, and the student takes the role of a tourist in this country. Two important things to be taken into consideration are the “settings” (the country, location of the meeting, gender, age, etc) and the “debriefing” session: discussions in class after the Role Playing activity starting with closed questions to open ended questions. Example: Inputs about the questions asked, did some questions need to be rephrased? In order not to offend the local person, was the tourist careful about the wordings he used? (Cultural differences), etc.

Students are paired in breakout rooms, and they are assigned one of the following tasks:

• The tourist meets the local person and they introduce each other and talk about where they come from, their families, their jobs, their backgrounds, etc.
• The tourist is asking the local person about the different theaters in town, what they are showing, where are they located and when are the shows?
• The tourist is asking the local person about the different tourist attractions in town or in the area.
• The tourist is acquiring about the different lifestyles of the local people in town, their culture, their daily lives, etc

Back to the main room, each pair acts the “tourist” role with the moderator “local” and a discussion starts. The other students should take notes and evaluate the discussions and questions asked, and then discuss them during the debriefing session!

AIM: This kind of activity creates a first layer of understanding and knowledge; it generates enthusiasm and a desire to learn more. It is definitely a “fun” way to learn!

4.  Student Debates via ELive

Student debates are a great way to get students active in their learning and to create opportunities for critical thinking. Because debate involves the construction of argument to defend a position, it is an excellent critical thinking teaching strategy. The process requires reasoning skills, analysis of multiple relationships, and consideration of multiple perspectives. This teaching strategy is best applied to topics involving controversy or dilemma particularly ethical or legal problems. Using ELive, student debates can be conducted in real time at a distance. Here is one approach that can be used.

1. The faculty member introduces the topic or problem and provides information and resources for the debate using Blackboard or via email.
2. Teams are formed (usually 2–3 per team); each team commits to defending or arguing for one side or the other.
3. Teams prepare a defense or argument for their position – ideally, this is done based on information from the literature. Debate preparation requires students to be able to articulate their position, and argue against the opposing position – thus students must be well prepared on both sides of the argument. The amount of time for preparation should depend on the type of problem posed. Preparation is often done as an out of class assignment for the following class period. Students can work either asynchronously or using ELive to create their debate presentations.
4. The debate occurs after the teams have had preparation time. The debate process includes opening arguments, presentation of viewpoints, rebuttal, and summary. This should be timed and closely monitored.
5. To use ELive for the main debate, it is a good idea to create two breakout rooms (Pro and Con) so that the teams have a place to get things together and strategize before the debate starts.
6. Discussion after the debate may be done to explore how the debate process changed the thinking of the students involved.

Special tips for using ELive for debates:

1. Make at least one member of each debate team a moderator so they can load slides and work the presentation.
2. Have a debate moderator that runs the show. This can be the instructor or a student. This person will also need moderator privileges.
3. Each team takes a certain amount of time to present their case. Audience can ask questions by raising their hands or using the chat area.
4. At the beginning and the end of debate, the audience can be polled. This will help to determine if their opinions have changed.

5.  Good Discussion via ELive

In order to facilitate good discussion students need to be prepared with the material before you begin. Send any information they need via email or place it in Blackboard as a pre-assignment to your session.

One good way to encourage effective discussion is to give the students a chance to talk about the topics among themselves before discussion with the whole class. Here is one successful method that utilizes breakout rooms and multiple questions.

1. Prepare sets of questions for each group (I use three groups) of students to discuss using Powerpoint or by typing on the whiteboard.
2. When in ELive, make three breakout rooms and load the rooms with the different question sets. These will be the starting points for the student discussion.
3. Once class starts, let the students know that they will be discussing three separate topics. Each group is responsible for the content of one topic.
4. Divide the class into three groups (I use the polling tool for this). Place the students in the breakout rooms and give them a set amount of time to discuss the questions they will see.
5. Ask the groups to come up with a number of reasonable solutions that they will bring back to the whole class for discussion.
6. Give a 2 minute warning to each group before you bring them back to the main room.
7. Once students are all back in the main room, the instructor can show any notes that have been created in the breakout rooms and ask for a spokesperson from each group to summarize what was discussed. This is the starting point to the whole class discussion on the topic.
8. Repeat this process for each topic. Make sure you notice questions in both the chat and with students who raise their hands.

6.  Learning Games

Click on Games to enter the world of the Learning Games! A forum for practically and critically thinking about digital game-based learning (DGBL), with a particular emphasis in online learning games and simulations We can also use this space as a means for sharing our experiments, investigations, and ideas.

Examples of Learning Games:

A variation of Family Feud

A variation of Pictionary

7.  Jigsaw in ELive - Extensive use of Breakout rooms

The jigsaw method is a specific cooperative learning technique with many years of success. Just as in a jigsaw puzzle, each piece—each learner’s part—is essential for the completion and full understanding of the final product. If each learner’s part is essential, then each learner is essential; and that is precisely what makes this strategy so effective.

Here is an example: The students in a history class are divided into small “expert” groups of five or six students each. Their current task is to learn about World War II. Each expert group is given one important topic to learn about. For example, one group is responsible for researching Hitler’s rise to power in pre-war Germany. Another group is assigned to cover concentration camps; a third, is assigned Britain’s role in the war; a fourth might research the contribution of the Soviet Union; etc.

Eventually each student will come back to their “home” group and will try to present a well-organized report about the subject they researched. The situation is specifically structured so that the only access any member has to the other assignments is by listening closely to the report of the person reciting. Here are the steps to conduct a Jigsaw in ELive:

1. Create breakout rooms for both “home” groups and for “expert” groups ahead of time.
2. Assign students to “home” teams of 4 or 5 students (generally their regular cooperative learning teams). Have students number off within their teams so you can quickly move them to rooms. You might use the whiteboard to do the sorting.
3. Move members of the “home” groups into “expert” group breakout rooms based on their numbers.
4. In the “expert” group breakout rooms, you can have prepared information waiting so they know what to do. In these rooms, everyone in the group has the same topic to discuss and learn.
5. Students work with members of their “expert” group to read about and/or research their topic. Make one or more of the students moderators if you would like them to use tools within ELive such as the web tour to gather additional information.
6. Each “expert” group prepares a short presentation and decides how they will teach their topic to their “home” group. This can be done using the whiteboard. Whiteboards from the “expert” group rooms can be saved and uploaded to the home rooms if moderator privileges have been provided to the students.
7. Return students to their “home” groups and allow them time to take turns teaching their team members the material.
8. It is usually helpful to have team members take notes or record the information in some way. You may want them to complete a graphic organizer or chart with the new information.
9. Once the “home’ groups have met to learn all the new content, then the class can discuss the exercise as a whole. Involve the class in a whole-group review of all the content you expect them to master on the assessment.
10. Administer an individual assessment or assignment to arrive at individual grades.

One warning, jigsaws take preparation and planning to pull off smoothly. Be sure that the first time you use this technique you have assistance and are well prepared.