Last month our “Creating the Active Classroom 101” blog addressed some easy methods faculty could implement into your class with minimal disruption to your current teaching style.

This month LIT would like to share more active classroom methods that build on last month’s 101.

To facilitate student involvement, reflection, interaction, and enjoyment in the learning process, active learning may hold the greatest promise for meeting the needs of students in today’s multicultural classrooms. We know that not all students learn in the same way. Faculty who consistently use different active learning strategies have a better chance of not only matching students’ learning style preferences, but also strengthens those style of which students are weak (Guild & Garger, 1985).

Let’s look at a few examples:

Ask the Winner – Ask students to silently solve a problem on the board. After revealing the answer, instruct those who got it right to raise their hands (and keep them raised); then, all other students are to talk to someone with a raised hand to better understand the question and how to solve it next time.

Process Analysis – Students track the steps they take to finish an assignment and comment on their approaches to it.

Empty Outlines – Distribute a partially completed outline of today’s lecture and ask students to fill it in. Useful at start or at end of class.

Punctuated Lectures – Ask student to perform five steps: listen, stop, reflect, write, give feedback. Students become self-monitoring listeners.

|  Kevin Yee | drkevinyee@gmail.com | Last updated 3/10/2019 Creative Commons BY-NC-SA