Student-Centered Remote Teaching: Lessons Learned from Online Education — from er.educause.edu by Shannon Riggs
Excerpt:
Student-content interaction is all about having students DO something with the course content or topic. Reading and listening to lectures will be part of many classes, but the passive receipt of information isn’t sufficient to help students engage with the course and meet course learning outcomes. Instead, we should create opportunities for active learning, which is when students DO something meaningful related to the course content and then reflect on their learning.
After students complete a course reading, ask them to do a follow-up assignment. Here are a few examples:
- Write a summary.
- Create an annotated visual on a PowerPoint slide that shows your key take-away from the reading.
- List five of your take-aways and one question you have based on the reading.
- Identify what you as a reader find to be the clearest point in the reading and the muddiest point
- Diagram a process.
- Make an infographic.
- Write an op-ed based on the content.
After students attend a synchronous lecture via web conference, ask them to complete a follow-up activity:
- Participate in a “think-pair-share” activity: The instructor poses a question, asks students to jot some notes down independently to form initial thoughts, distributes students into breakout rooms to discuss, and then pulls the class back together as a group to discuss and synthesize.
- Complete a poll to check comprehension.
- Illustrate ideas on the web conference whiteboard.
- Flip the web conference “lecture” by asking students to come prepared to discuss topics they have already read up on.
- Give students the opportunity to lead a discussion.