Evaluation and Assessment | Teaching Practices |Teaching with Technology| Sample Course Evaluation Forms
Teaching Tools
2. Teaching Practices
2.1. Activities and Objectives
Ideas for Increasing Classroom Participation and Active Learning
Give students extra time to think before participating
- Pause for a few seconds so that students can think carefully and look back at their notes as needed before answering a complex question.
- Prompt students to re-read a particular problem or passage before you begin to discuss it in detail.
- Encourage students to attempt to set up new problems before you go over the solutions.
- Ask students to write briefly in response to a question you wish to discuss in detail.
Keep students actively involved
- Ask open-ended questions which allow for several good responses (e.g. advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses, examples of a concept or application).
- Invite students to generate examples of concepts or possible applications of the concepts they are learning.
- Assign short in-class problems or writing tasks where students must work on their own or in groups and become engaged in the issues in detail.
- Choose examples which are vivid, realistic, familiar, or humorous to hold students' attention.
- Conduct a demonstration or experiment, when possible, to make abstract concepts more concrete.
Make the most of group resources
- Invite students to exchange rough drafts or partial solutions so that they can compare approaches and provide feedback to one another.
- Ask students to form brief "buzz groups" for about 2 minutes to compare their initial responses to complex or controversial questions and ask a student to speak on behalf of each group.
- Provide opportunities for small groups to discuss readings or problems in order to generate a set of issues for the larger group to discuss.
- Allow students time to analyze or solve relatively complex examples in small groups so that you can more closely monitor their reasoning and provide some individual and immediate feedback during class.
Help students monitor their learning and understanding
- Give a short quiz (graded or ungraded) on recent class material to help students identify what they should be retaining.
- Ask students to make estimates or predictions based on the theories and models they are learning and discuss their reasoning.
- Provide data for students to interpret using course concepts, particularly data from sources which are relevant, interesting, or practical for them.
- Vary the kinds of questions you ask to include conceptual issues which require broad reflection and synthesis as well as quick judgments about the most central issues.
Facilitate the use of note-taking as a potential active learning strategy
- Pause regularly and substantially as students should be taking detailed notes -- silence can be very helpful while students are extracting and summarizing central ideas.
- Provide handouts with skeletal outlines or diagrams which students can annotate so that more of their attention is focused on higher-level concepts rather than transcription.
Adapted from the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University
