by Robert Cole, Program Director, Reinert Center
The Reinert Center’s Resources Revisited series highlights existing resources available to the SLU teaching community that may be especially timely or useful at certain points in the academic year.
This month in Resources Revisited we’d like to focus on active learning activities. As we approach midterms, it may be time to think about how we can change things up a little. Perhaps it’s time to get students to talk with one another, provide each other with feedback on an assignment or help them interact more with course content. The resource guides mentioned in the following paragraphs are designed to help think about how to do just that.
When we want to get students to talk a little more in class, we can start with having them talk to one another. The resource guides Considerations for Student Group Activities, and Student Peer Reviews as an Assignment provide some ideas for ways students can interact with one another whether online or in-class.
While slightly more inward facing, providing students with structures enabling them to reflect more intentionally (Implementing Reflective Assignments) or asking them to identify questions, quotes or talking points (Student Generated Quotes, Questions and Talking Points) may help students interact with specific content in your course.
Asking students to interact with the content can also take form in other active learning activities. The resource guides Alternatives to the Think-Pair-Share Activity Design and Concept Mapping provide ways that you may be able to have students engage with content alone and/or with others. These and many other resource guides on our Website can provide inspiration for ways to engage students more actively with one another, the content in your course, and you as a faculty member. However, if you’d like to talk something through with someone in the Reinert Center, please feel free to request a confidential teaching consultation.
The Notebook 