Student Learning and Engagement

In the blog post 'How to Engage Students and Support Learning in Large Classes' Bonni Stachoviak highlights positive teaching practices she's observed from Michael Sandel's popular edX course on Justice. These are great suggestions for engaging students in large courses, and also in general for crafting interesting lectures:

• Asking open-ended questions and having all students silently reflect on their answers before anyone shares to the broader class.
• Inviting students to predict what will happen next in a story, or what they think will be the result if a specific choice is made.
• Using minimalist slide decks, and therefore not overwhelming students with lots of text to digest while he is speaking.
• Starting each class session by asking students to recall what was discussed in the previous session.
• Calling students by name, even in such a large class. He asks each student who speaks to identify themselves, and he regularly refers back to that speaker much later in the same class session.
• Painting pictures in the students’ heads through excellent storytelling.
• Exploring many different applications of the same concept. For example, what does libertarianism look like in historical events, in bioethics, in compensation, and in human rights?
  

Additional Resources:

• Student Engagement in Large Online Classes (CNDLS, Georgetown)

Resources

Group work, particularly in online settings, presents unique challenges including managing accountability, fostering effective communication, and ensuring meaningful collaboration. The resources listed below provide several ideas to help address these challenges.

• From Team Charters to Reflections: Six Steps for a Successful Group Project (Faculty Focus)
  Provides a comprehensive guide on how to successfully implement group projects in a classroom setting. Key strategies include starting the project early, allowing students to choose their partners, incorporating project-based learning with a community partner, creating team charters, providing class time for group work, and encouraging self-reflection.
• Ideas for Great Group Work (Duke)
  Offers practical strategies for making group assignments and projects more effective and engaging for students. It emphasizes the importance of clear goals, choosing suitable assignments, and helping students develop group work skills. It also include actionable tips such as conducting surveys to understand students' previous group work experiences, allowing time for group bonding, and offering resources on delegation and conflict resolution.
• Online Students Don't Have to Work Solo (Inside Higher Education)
  Mark Lieberman explores the complexities and benefits of implementing group projects in online settings. He shares specific strategies including setting clear objectives, allowing students to choose their teams, using tools like Google Docs for collaboration and using different approaches for grading.
• Student Perceptions of Online Group Work: What They Really Think and How to Make it Work
  This blog post from curriculum developer Debbie Morrison covers common barriers students face with online group projects and offers practical strategies to overcome them. She emphasizes the importance of meaningful assignments, accountability, effective use of technology, and leadership within groups.

From Cornell's webpage on Active Learning:

Active learning methods ask students to engage in their learning by thinking, discussing, investigating, and creating. In class, students practice skills, solve problems, struggle with complex questions, make decisions, propose solutions, and explain ideas in their own words through writing and discussion. Timely feedback, from either the instructor or fellow students, is critical to this learning process. Education research shows that incorporating active learning strategies into university courses significantly enhances student learning experiences (Freeman et al., 2014; Theobald et al., 2020).

Ideas for Active Learning Activities:

• Getting Started with Active Learning Techniques (Cornell)
• Active Learning Techniques (UGA)
• Introduction to the use of Gamification in Higher Education (University of Chicago)

Metacognition:

From the University of Oregon's webpage on active learning and metacognition::

"...[Active learning] puts emphasis on students taking an active role in constructing their own knowledge, developing their own skills, and thinking at a higher order, including self-reflection on how and why they learn, that is, metacognition. By structuring courses to include more active learning and metacognition, instructors can challenge students to do the hard work of learning and support students in becoming more effective learners, thereby promoting student success."

• Reflection in the Classroom (CNDLS, Georgetown)
• Reflection Activities (Clemson)

Resources

The University of Alabama's K. Patricia Cross Academy has several resources on techniques for effective and engaging lectures: 

• Lecture Engagement Log Lecture Engagement Logs are records that students keep to document the various academic activities they engage in for a particular class.
• Lecture Wrappers A Lecture Wrapper is a tool for teaching students self-monitoring behavior as they identify key points from a lecture and then compare their points to the instructor’s list of points.
• Punctuated Lecture During a Punctuated Lecture, students listen to the lecture for approximately 15 to 20 minutes. At the end of the lecture segment, the teacher pauses and asks students to answer a question about what they are doing at that particular moment.

Additional Resources:

• Creating engaging online lectures (University of Michigan)

Resources

• Digital Toolbox: Co-constructing Knowledge with Your Students (Ohio University)
  This toolbox explores ways students can use technology to co-construct knowledge in your course, including co-authoring documents (syllabi, assignments), running a meeting, knowledge sharing, and synchronous meetings
• Maximizing Student Agency: Implementing and Measuring Student-Centered Learning Practices 
  This study was conducted with high school students, but contains helpful information that is also relevant to students in higher education settings