Choosing the right activities
Creating objectives in class involves a lot of preparation. You have to make sure that you always have the ABCDs of learning in mind.
The Audience: are they visual learners? Auditory learners? or Kinesthetic learners? You have to prepare for all these types of learners because in a class you will have all theses types of learners.
The Behavior: students should be able to demonstrate if they learned a new knowledge, a new skill or apply the relevance of the new project.
The Condition: students should be able to realize the conditions that is in the real-world work environment.
The Degree: learning objectives should not be measured by the degree. I agree that if the learning objectives are wrong, so is the learning.
Yes, coming from the corporate training world we always say: the power is in the debrief. Learning activities are powerful & we need to make sure that we take the time to help students draw meaning out of the experience.
Ryan
I like the idea of lecturing for 20 minutes, changing the dynamics with a game and then having equal time to discuss the activity and reactions to ensure learning takes place.
At our school we use a learning style assessment workbook so the student and the teacher both know what learning style is best for each student. Then when doing group activities I try to have the students group themselves with different learning styles so each type of learner can learn at their highest level and help the other group members understand through group discussion the projects related to their learning styles maximizing everyone's learning.
It is important to gain some perspective on your student's learning style. However, in a 9-10 week course, meeting once a week, the course content is well on its way by the time you are able to assess their styles.
Hi Kathryn!
A very good observation and important to your success as an instructor as well as to the student's success.
I am curious how you determine the differences in learners.
Keep up the good work!
Jane Davis
ED107 Facilitator
It is interesting that an activity that works wonderfully in one class will fail in another. It really speaks to the fact that all learners are different and respond differently to different activities.
I have limited hours to provide the information that is required. Putting in activities often takes valuable time that is needed to get the iformation to the students. Yet, I know that the lecture material is often overwhelming and I loose them in the process. What would you suggest for activities that will get the information to the students in another way.
Planning with these factors in mind adds new dimensions to the planning process. It involves much more than just planning the material to be covered and picking methonds and activities to cover that material without so much thought to the types of students in your class. This requires a deeper degree of thinking and planning.It will require some practice to put into action.
When choosing the right activity in a class setting, I think it is important to include a little from each learning style in order to reach everyone in your class. Once this is achieved you will have a much happier class.Each day they return to class they are looking forward to something creative from their instructor.
As a visual learner myself, I do find that I prepare a lot of visual or hands on excercises to contribute to the learning experience. I know that I assume too often that my audience learns the same way that I do.
Because we are a trade skills program, learning is typically followed by performance exams. Our environment is as real-world as we can make it, and our solar panel installation is done on a real roof.
The results are usually correct, and the students like the learning environment, so I believe that we are meeting our objectives.
I've often employed this method and agree you must know your audience to be able to select the correct activity to maximize its effectivness!
activities help them learn keeps them in tune
You are right, preperation and understanding your class is a must. Chosing an activity that coincides with the subject, understandable and acheiveable for all, and can be done in a certain time frame and having an avaiable location can be challenging. After the activity the students should be able to take away knowledge that can be used in their future carrers.
