Converting Your Course for the Active Learning Classroom
Using the space and technology effectively will require changes in your course. Often it is not an easy, seamless conversion to teach effectively in an ALC. It takes time, support, and experience to truly consider your curricula and how to redesign it to effectively teach and maximize student learning in an ALC. Creating and preparing course material (lectures and in-class activities) for the semester in advance will make the transition to this teaching style less stressful.
Course Planning
Rather than starting with the material that you want to cover during the semester, begin planning your course with your desired outcomes in mind.
Questions to Ask Yourself, as the Instructor
- What do I want my students to be able to do in this class?
- What are the assignments that would allow me to see that my students have achieved the outcome?
- How can I use the space and technology to help achieve the learning objectives?
- What do students need to know before they come to class?
- How can we as instructors get them to learn what we need them to?
Need some ideas to answer these questions? Click here to visit Stanford University's Teaching Common's list of learning activities that you can implement while teaching in an active learning classroom.
Characteristics of Proven Activities in an ALC:
- Support of the lecture with use of technology
- Quickly completed
- Detailed written instructions are provided with time limits clearly indicated
- Students are required to work together and are accountable to each other (i.e., cannot be completed by an individual)
- Many will not have one single correct answer
- Able to be broken down so that students can work on pieces and then integrate them into the lesson
- Students are required to take different perspectives or come up with alternative approaches
- Technologies used enhance the activity rather than complicating it or adding no value