Synchronous / Zoom Active Learning

Can you engage in Active Learning in Zoom (or another teleconferencing system for that matter) ... YES!

Here are some ideas to get you started ... some are 'low-guts' and some require a little more courage (I encourage you to be brave, fearless and have guts in this paradigm shift)

Active learning sits at both ends of the noise spectrum: super quiet solitary thinking, all the way to what might seem like uncontrolled super-loud chaos. Interestingly enough active learning sits on a camel hump: super quiet and super noisy*.

Let's start with low or no guts and super quiet. In the online class this is super easy. Check out my page Going Solo for ideas.

Carousel activities: using Padlet or Google Docs creatively

In the traditional classroom a carousel activity involves groups of students moving from station to station adding information, ideas, thoughts on different questions of topics.

This can easily be translated using technology and breakout rooms. Students are given a link to a Padlet prepopulated with questions of topics and the groups move from topic to topic adding their ideas as comments.

You can also use a shared Google slide or document for this purpose, crowd sourcing ideas and thoughts as the document is collaboratively built.

*For more details on this see: Owens, M. T., Seidel, S. B., Wong, M., Bejines, T. E., Lietz, S., Perez, J. R., ... & Balukjian, B. (2017). Classroom sound can be used to classify teaching practices in college science courses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(12), 3085-3090. https://www.pnas.org/content/114/12/3085

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