IDEAS to get students ACTIVELY ENGAGED in LEARNING

Most students would like to interact with others in their courses. Students need to be engaged with other students, the "outside world", in groups, and need opportunities for self-assessment and reflection. We can provide our students with opportunities to create presentations and portfolios, where they can create their own videos, find and display images and add links to web sites. The chart below provides ideas for engaging activities you can add to your classes.

What you want to facilitate...?	Ideas to consider...	Level
Student-to-Student interaction	Use Forums for in-depth discussions, or Chat Room for shorter interactions Get ideas from your peers: Discussion Forum Questions used by Durham Tech Instructors Or try these Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) Also: Allow students to comment on each others' Blog posts or Student Pages (see below)	Easy Easy
Student-to-world interaction	Have students interview relatives, friends, experts, or others on a topic related to class – and post their results in the Forums Or have students create a video of an interview (recommend posting on YouTube and marking "unlisted"). Students can share links to their videos in the Forum or submit to the instructor. Have students take a picture of something they made, a paper showing a problem they worked, or something you asked them to find or observe. Students can post the picture in a Forum, or submit to the instructor via Assignments.	Easy Easy-to- Medium Easy
Self-assessments	Quiz	Easy
Reflective assignments	Blogs - Example Blog Activity	Easy
Written/visual presentations or student portfolios	Student Pages (in Lessons)	Medium
Oral Presentations	Have students create a video of their presentation (post to YouTube and mark "unlisted") Have students use Screencast-O-Matic or other tool to create a presentation. Use Sakai's Meetings tool to facilitate "real time" online student presentations to a group	Easy-to- Medium Medium Advanced
Group Work	Create Groups in Sakai. Then you can create a Forum topic for each group Give each group an online meeting space (using Sakai's Meetings tool) Wikispaces (outside of Sakai) – have students collaboratively build a web page	Medium Advanced Advanced