{"id":131,"date":"2022-07-11T10:16:33","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T14:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice\/?p=131"},"modified":"2023-08-28T14:18:40","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T18:18:40","slug":"the-heart-of-the-course-learning-activities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice\/2022\/07\/11\/the-heart-of-the-course-learning-activities\/","title":{"rendered":"The Heart of the Course: Learning Activities!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jeff Rients<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Along with a set of significant learning goals<\/a> for your students to achieve and an array of assessments<\/a> that allow you (and they!) to know they\u2019ve met them, you also need to develop what the students actually are going to do in your course. These learning activities<\/strong> include anything that prepares the students to succeed at the assessments and gain the practice (and feedback) needed to achieve the learning goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We often think about learning activities in terms of  \u2018delivering content\u2019, e.g. lectures, readings, videos, etc. But instead of thinking about these items as the things we the teachers deliver to students, it helps to flip the script and start thinking about what students<\/em> will do <\/strong>in the course to learn more deeply.  This shift in thinking about learning matters\u2013because once you take the emphasis off of you<\/em> delivering the content and put it on them<\/em> interacting with it, you are then in a position to ask yourself this key question: what else<\/em> can the students do (besides consume more content) in order to achieve the goals of the course?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s where active learning techniques<\/strong> often come into play. These techniques give students an opportunity to engage with course material directly and authentically while affording them a chance to practice the skills they will need to succeed at your assessments. Some courses come with readymade activities that you may already be using, such as students working on problem sets in a math course, group critiques in an art course, or role-played client interactions in a therapy course. However, a wide variety of active learning techniques exist that will work in nearly any classroom. These techniques are designed to go beyond the flawed idea that students will simply absorb the content like sponges (which we humans aren\u2019t really that good at, cognitively). Rather they put students into the position of interacting with the content, and each other, in order to gain a deeper understanding of course concepts and content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a simple active learning technique that we love at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think-Pair-Share<\/h2>\n\n\n\n