Activities: How will learners practice learning?

Plan for Practice

This 4As component emphasizes the need to plan relevant learning experiences for students to practice cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills, apply course concepts through critical learning and thinking practices, and make meaning as they co-learn within networks that involve other learners: teachers, peers, community members, authors of course materials, whatever their learning space (inperson, online, in lab or field or performance or maker settings).

What is the most important factor in successful learning?

  1. The intention and desire to learn. 

  2. Paying close attention to the material as you study. 

  3. Learning in a way that matches your own learning style. 

  4. The time you spend studying. 

  5. What you think about while studying.

Stephen Chew's question - "What is the most important factor in successful learning?" is the central question in the second video in his YouTube “How to get the most out of studying” series. Chew acknowledges that items 1, 2, and 4 play a role in doing learning work, and he joins 21st century scholars in asserting item #3, learning styles, as a neuromythology.

The response “What you think about while studying” is, Chew offers, the one best supported by learning and educational science scholarship focused on how and why, and what forms of active and metacognitive learning work to support broader ranges of learners, and to demystify how learning works for all learners. As instructors we can provide guidance for “thinking while studying” by offering learners an orienting task, a starting point for learning to learn. 

Orienting tasks might include opening the list of class session readings/resources with a note about why these readings, reviewing them in a specific order, and/or offering a central question for learners to keep in mind as they make notes. Another option might be to create a preparing for class writing activity that calls on learners to identify what they see as the three most important passages in a set of readings, then describe how they’d explain these ideas to two different audiences, and post a question about some aspect of the topic that still poses a problem for them. (As a note, assuring learners that they’ll use this writing during a class session, and outlining how you’ll respond - via “global comments” such as class feedback comments while you’re together, with minimal marking feedback to individual uploads).

Having something to think about is key to processes of filtering, sorting, and linking new sensory information. In this, an orienting task sparks active processing to support deep learning. Each of two examples above provides learners with a springboard for studying, and a set of ideas they can draw on during their next inperson or online class session.

While Chew’s primary audience is first year college learners, his YouTube series is also helpful for us as teachers who may not have learned about how learning works – broadly, or even in our own (un)successful learning experiences.

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Class session planning resources

  • The “4As Applied to Class Sessions” google document, featuring introductory genetics and literature courses, can be applied to a range of learning spaces and course levels, including online spaces and graduate courses.
  • An “Active Learning Cheat Sheet: 10 Steps to Getting Started” pdf incorporates preparing for class and 4As elements (eg, setting up an open and safe environment, activity goal, right exercises, judge success).

Learn About Learning

It’s common that successful learners and teachers haven’t actually learned about how learning works in theory, in practice, and - most importantly - for learners who aren’t us.  we he following scholarship of teaching and learning resources:

  • “Key Aspects of How the Brain Learns,” a google document drawn from James Zull’s article focusing on the “four fundamental pillars of learning,” describes an iterative process involving acts of gathering data, making association by reflecting on and creating from sensory input, and testing by actively applying ideas and insights. This resource includes summaries of each component along with strategies to support learners and learning work.
  • In  the pdf “Applying the Science of Learning to the University and Beyond,” Diane F. Halpern and Milton D. Hakel set out 10 guiding principles for practices in retrieval, long-term retention, and transfer that support student learning. 
  • The authors of What Inclusive Instructors Do address “How Do They Conduct Class Inclusively?” in a digital book chapter focusing on foundational inclusive teaching concepts and practices; the chapter’s reflective questions move readers from gathering data into reflecting and creating possibilities to try out in upcoming courses.
  • Jeanne Higbee, Carl Chung, and Leon Hsu invite readers to consider ways of "Enhancing the inclusiveness of first-year courses through Universal Instructional Design" in their book chapter from Pedagogy and Student Services for Institutional Transformation: Implementing Universal Design in Higher Education.
  • Barbara Millis frames ways of “Using Metacognition to Promote Learning” before, during, and after class sessions in a pdf that builds on suggestion to outline metacognitive approaches to testing, or assessment that asks students to demonstrate learning.
  • The open access article “Homework as a metacognitive tool in an undergraduate physics course” can serve a springboard for thinking about individual- and team-based problem solving homework in STEM.

Select Learning Practices

Just as there is no single “one size fits all” template that we can use to accommodate our syllabuses, the public face of our unique courses and course designs, there’s not a single modality or format that we can draw on for conducting the class sessions we conduct and class preparation work our students complete.

This next section of resources focuses on moving from homework to “preparing for class work,” on developing multiple types of interactive class sessions, and on processes for developing community agreements and plans for challenging conversations.

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From homework to preparing for class work

  • Many instructors draw on CATs - Classroom Activities and Assessment Techniques,  a framework and rich set of example practices first developed by Patricia Cross and Tom Angelo, as springboards for developing course-specific preparation for class and inclass or online activities. CEI’s “Classroom Activities/Assessments Matrix” google document combining general and example practices can serve as a starting place. 
  • The “Supporting Reading and Reflection” google folder opens with a brief analysis of the ways that digital materials impact reading practices of, especially, learners new to a field and/or new to creating for purposes beyond highlighting and rereading; the resources that follow on range from specific weekly writing assignments to collections of teacher practices linked to specific CATs mentioned above.
  • Given that learners will find it difficult to gain comfort and fluency with new concepts, types of resources, and skills or practices, we can help normalize the existence of and need to work through difficulties by periodically offering “difficulties” or “choke point” preparing for class work:
    • The “Difficulties” google document describes types of difficulties students may encounter, and provides examples of activities for individuals and small groups that can be adapted across disciplines.
    • The Effortful Educators “Choke Points and Pitfalls” blogpost describes choke points as “a limitation or constraint in the cognitive system that students must cope with in order to learn,” and pitfalls as “a common error students make when studying.” Like other difficulties, both of these can hinder learning and studying. 
    • Stephen Chew provides a graphical organizer to illustrate for teachers and learners the tangles and untangling process for these difficulties in “An Advance Organizer for Student Learning,” an open access article and in companion YouTube video set to begin at the Choke Points segment.

Toward interactive class sessions

Interactive Class Planning - Generally

As a starting point, we’ll offer a pair of key resources, and this note that ChimeIn, a student response system created for UMN system use, is an effective tool for supporting active learning and integrating quizzing during a class session:

  • The “Small Changes for Planning Interactive Lectures” overview document that highlights several modes of interactive lecturing, small changes for breaking up lecture segments, and practical strategies for organizing lectures transparently; this strategy can also inform thinking about interactive formats for discussion-based courses where the lecture portion will be shorter and the discussion longer. 
  • The 4As can be used for more than overall course design as exemplified in the google document “4As Applied to Class Sessions,” which showcases interactive plans for a large literature course, and a smaller genetics course.
  • A “One-Sentence Lesson Plan,” a google document that features Norman Eng’s template for this activity - In this class session, students will [accomplish Outcome X] by [using Strategy/Method Y], so that [they will be helped in Z way] - and an array of examples.

Interactive Lectures - Larger Class Enrollments

  • Cornell University’s “Large Classes: Teaching Tips” webpage is a short but substantial resource with sections focused on topics from building commenting in large classes, to supporting learning with structure and practice, to simplifying assessment, to class session logistics, and ending with a segment devoted to working with Teaching Assistants.
  • The webpage “Encouraging Active Learning in Large Class Teaching,” from Oxford University briefly describes 15 ideas to encourage active learning in large enrollment classes.
  • Finally, learners can find it challenging to share their ideas in larger enrollment courses, even with student response systems like ChimeIn. Taking time to change up what and how you ask students to share ideas from small groups - pairs, trios, buzz groups (as the Oxford resource notes) - can provide opportunities as the authors of "Reconsidering the share of a think–pair–share” illustrate in their open access article.

Incorporating Discussion

  • “Getting Lecturers to Take Discussions Seriously," an open access article by Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill, nicely condenses key ideas from the pair’s book-length writing on discussion as ways of learning and leading. Here, the duo provide a call and response analysis that sets out reasons for common objections and unrealistic expectations, and responds with multiple strategies and examples from experience.
  • If you're considering a move from interactive lecture pauses to “bigger” discussions, that array of activities set out in the “Medium-Sized Learning Activities for Multiple Learning Spaces” google document builds on Brookfield and Preskill to support learning and brainstorming about gallery walk, jigsaw, and fishbowl activities, which can be incorporated into online, inperson, and hybrid learning spaces.
  • Three resources focus specifically on ways of incorporating discussion in lab-based courses - the “Access, Inclusion, and Accommodation in Lab Settings” webpage, an open access pre-print of “The Multicultural Lab,” by AT Miller, and Kimberley Tanner’s open access article “Talking to Learn: Why Biology Students Should Be Talking in Classrooms and How to Make it Happen.”
  • If you’re looking to investigate interactive online discussion practices that provoke original thinking and feedback opportunities that overload neither learners nor teachers, review the “Getting Quality Posts and Effective Feedback” pdf teaching resource, and the “Reflection as a discussion forum activity/assessment” google document.  

Community agreements and challenging conversations

Creating participation guidelines or community practices with learners can help establish the course climate, convey how we want to be when disagreement and conflict arise, and promote critical thinking and other kinds of learning. These resources can guide your thinking about an equity-centered approach to developing discussion practices with learners:

  • An Equity-Centered Look at Classroom Ground Rules - Educause webpage
  • Stop Making Guidelines and Ground Rules: Make Practices Instead - blogpost
  • Sensoy and DiAngelo “Respect Differences? Challenging the Common Guidelines in Social Justice Education” - open access article
  • “Three Examples of Discussion/Participation Agreements” - a google document that includes two springboards for and a copy of community discussion agreement created by students.

And, for a big picture overview and specific examples of “Strategies to Support Challenging Conversations in the Classroom,” review a CEI teaching resource that links the backward course design process to planning for discussion-based courses and class sessions during challenging times. Topics include assessing course context, class session design, selecting preparation and facilitation strategies, and what we might do during and after challenging moments.

Syllabus Drafting Activity #3: Course Schedule and Major Assignment Descriptions 

Drafting Activity #3 is designed to support you in designing learning-centered syllabus elements linked to the Activities and Assessment components of course and syllabus design outlined in this teaching resource. The Drafting Activity #3 webpage focuses on developing a course schedule, drafting short activities, assignments, and assessments descriptions, and beginning to integrate course policies. The Assessment webpage includes resources related to development of major assignments and assessments, including final exams, team-based learning, field work, case studies and simulations, and research-based writing and presentations.

Deeper Dive Resources

As an example of planning for accessible learning and teaching, the answer to the question “Must students write a paragraph about how the circulatory system works to demonstrate their circulatory system knowledge?” is most often “No.”

Consider instead what becomes possible as a practice of demonstration of learning when the prompt is “Describe a complete cycle in the circulatory system.” This prompt opens up options for learners who might be encouraged to choose to create a diagram or infographic, label an image, write that paragraph setting out steps in the process, or make a short video that combines an image with a narration.

The Deeper Dive builds on this example with resources from a Universal Design for Learning site, and a workshop on “Flexibility for Accessibility.”

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Separating means from ends

  • The “Learning Goals - Separate Means from Ends” webpage notes that this separation makes room for “providing UDL options in the materials, methods, and assessments“ as part of “addressing variability in learning.” 
  • The “Embrace Structured Flexibility” bookmarked principle in the Teaching with Access and Inclusion framework, as well as the attendance, deadlines, and tools to support flexibility sections of the “Flexibility for Accessibility” slidedeck and notes or video suggest specific strategies to support students in practicing learning, and to plan for a bounded flexibility that supports teachers own flexibility and accessibility needs.  (Note: For the video, if you do not have a University of Minnesota email account, you may request a guest account for access.)