Developing Learning Activities

What are learning activities?

Learning activities, that require students to actively ‘do something’ with the content and concepts presented in the course and then reflect on the learning. Learning activities vary in interaction (student↔content, student↔faculty, and student↔student). Plan a mix of these types of interactions when designing learning activities. It is important to establish that "learning activities must also be designed so that the learning leads to the achievement of the course and program outcomes." (Wasserman et al.)

We make a distinction from the term, course activities, are all the activities you include in your course. These could be graded and ungraded activities and involve faculty and/or students; announcements, discussions, assignments, journals, group work, peer review, etc. 

Student learning outcomes are statements that describe the knowledge or skills students should acquire by the end of a particular assignment, class, course, or program, and help students understand why that knowledge and those skills will be useful to them.

Assessment strategies when developing  learning activities

Assessment strategies

• an approach to teaching and learning that creates feedback which is then used to improve students' performance. Students become more involved in the learning process and from this gain confidence in what they are expected to learn and to what standard.

Formative assessment

• The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. Examples: low stakes quizzes, journal entry, lab report

Summative assessment

• The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. Examples: portfolios, final projects, final presentations, final reports

Additional Resources

• Scaffolding Online Student Success. (2019, March 27). Sardo, Cassandra and Sindelar, Anthony. Faculty Focus. Retrieved from: https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/scaffolding-online-student-success/

• Wasserman , J., Davis, C., & Astrab, D. (n.d.). 2.4.13 overview of learning activities - pcrest.com. Pacific Crest Faculty Developement Series. Retrieved November 8, 2021, from http://www.pcrest.com/research/fgb/2_4_13.pdf.

• https://www.queensu.ca/teachingandlearning/modules/active/12_exmples_of_active_learning_activities.html