Balancing Instruction & Activities

Balancing Instruction & Activities

Faculty are tasked with providing a good lesson plan outline for their assigned course. It’s not news by now, but the approach best received/most effective to gain learner engagement is the active learning strategy. Experiential learning in the classroom presumes the following:

• Learners have a level of engagement with the world around them, and learning meets them in this connection with the world;

• Present concepts and theories that are essentially connected to the learners' experiences and expectations in their field of study;

• Concepts and theories are mediated/understood/questioned through the lens of student experience.

• Therefore, learners must consistently reflect on the meeting of theory and practice throughout each course and over their program of study.

With that said, new learning is not generated solely from the experiential base of the learner or from the codified knowledge a facilitator brings to bear: it is generated from the interaction of those key elements in the process classroom environment. Active learning strategies (discussions that employ examination of concepts through learner experience) help capture the richness and far-reaching impact of that interaction.

There are several tips for the kinds of techniques you might want to employ for active learning, consider the tips below.

As a course writer you are expected to provide a good set of learning activities each week, designed to:

• cover the concepts identified;

• reinforce homework knowledge (reading, assignments);

• and allow for learning through a number of learning styles.