Interactive Lessons & Review Activities

Interactive lessons and activities can engage students in a number of ways; in particular, they prompt students to engage with content, rather than passively absorb it.

They can be presented in-class or as online activities for students to complete at home.

“Gamified” activities involving smart devices and laptops are a fun way for students to review their understanding of learning content.

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Interactive Lessons and Activity Ideas

Listed below are a few ideas to help you get started:

Creating Interactive Lessons

Interactive lessons encourages student participation and active knowledge checking to ensure that key concepts are understood.

The tools listed below have a “presenter” feature that allows you to share a code with your students, so they can engage as a group. The lesson will be projected at the front of the classroom, and students will be prompted to answer questions on their personal devices when the video pauses. This allows you to initiate classroom discussions based on student answers. Student results are also tracked which is helpful in the case of formative assessment.

Some of the tools (e.g. Nearpod) has a “homework” mode in which students can individually complete the lesson out of class.

Tools

Nearpod

Nearpod is an online, easy-to-use tool by which you can create lessons with a variety of content including: PowerPoint files, videos, images, pdf files etc.

Interesting in Trying Nearpod? Learning and Teaching Services is helping to pilot this tool for the 2017/2018 academic year. For more information, send a note to LTS@algonquincollege.com.

PlayPosit

PlayPosit provides a similar interaction to Nearpod; the difference is that the content is comprised exclusively of streaming video content from popular sites like YouTube, LearnZillion, TeacherTube, and Vimeo, among a number of others. It is possible to create Techsmith Relay videos, using Algonquin’s platform, and embed this content into Playposit.

EDPuzzle

EDPuzzle is an online, easy-to-use tool that allows users to select a video and customize it by editing, cropping, recording audio, and adding questions to make an engaging presentation or lesson.

Techsmith Relay

Techsmith Relay is screencast software that allows you to record video of your screen along with narration and easily share the videos with your students via Brightspace or embed them in an interactive video lesson using PlayPosit or EdPuzzle. Or, post Brightspace quiz questions below where you post the video in your course.

Techsmith Fuse

The TechSmith Fuse app allows you to take photos and video using your mobile device and upload them to the Algonquin College TechSmith Relay server in order embed in Brightspace or use within an interactive video lesson using PlayPosit or EdPuzzle. You can choose to import and upload both existing photos and videos, or capture something new using the app’s built-in camera.

Since students can also use TechSmith Relay and TechSmith Fuse, this creates opportunities beyond non-traditional assignments and submit work in multimedia format.

FOR HYBRID COURSES: Supplement a face-to-face or online lesson with an activity that aligns with lesson content. Interactive video tools can be used to create self-assessed or professor-assessed activities, using existing videos that build on lesson topics, or professor-created video content. For some of the tools listed below, an associated Brightspace quiz should be created to provide grades to students, as not all video tools provide student analytics that integrate into the Learning Management System.

“Gamify” Your Activities

Web-based tools, such as Kahoot! and Quizziz, allow you to engage students in fun group activities in which they can use either their laptop or smart device. Group activities can include: “getting to know you” ice breakers, content review, polls, and group discussions. Similar to Nearpod and PlayPosit, student results are tracked and can be used for formative assessment.

Quizziz differs slightly in that rather than completing the activity publicly as a group, students complete the activity individually on their laptop or devices. This means that the questions are shown on the individual devices of students rather than projected in front of the classroom. If a leadership board is used, students see how they performed relative to their classmates. Quizziz activities can also be completed out of class within “homework” mode.

Get Support and Learn More Ideas

If you would like help with using the tools in this section or would like to explore more teaching with technology ideas, contact an Educational Technologist from Learning and Teaching Services.