Section 3: Lesson Planning

Rationale: Classroom engagement, while not a pure indicator of knowledge acquisition, is positively correlated with student satisfaction with their learning. Active learning has been demonstrated repeatedly as a more-effective method of learning compared to passive learning in classroom settings. Course objectives and competencies are there for a reason, and activities which guide learners to them are the most-effective means of achieving them. By connecting activities to each other throughout the course, students will feel there is a consistent narrative to their learning, rather than a series of random assessments. Students able to see this consistent narrative are more likely to succeed in the class, and their program of study (CITATION).

Active Learning & Engagement: For instructors having difficulty with evaluating an activity for active learning and engagement, there are multiple things to consider, but there are also several pitfalls to avoid. Here is a short list which might be useful as a guide.

1. If the student is only expected to read a chapter, listen to a lecture, watch a movie, listen to a song, or similar, it is passive.
2. A combination of the activities listed in number 1 is still passive if done in sequence.
3. Asking students questions they are expected to answer to move on is active.
4. Asking students questions that only one of them is expected to answer to move on is seldom, if ever, active for the whole class.
5. If a student is expected to flip a page to continue reading, that’s passive.
6. If a student is expected to flip a page in a unique way each time to continue reading, that’s active.

Rationale: The above rationale for Section 3.1 covers most of the reasoning, with “tools” replacing “activities” where appropriate. The variety of tools allows students to engage with the material from different “angles,” increasing understanding and promoting multiple approaches to problem-solving.

A warning: Tools should not be used simply for their own sake. What this means is that a student shouldn’t be using something like an iPad just because iPads are new and the school bought them. Instructors should have solid reasoning for using any tool, no matter how simple, and should rethink a tool’s usage if they cannot come up with a satisfactory rationale for it.

Defining Tools v Materials: While materials are the items students are tasked with learning, tools are items that students or instructors use to engage in that learning. For example, if a student is learning a book (the material), they might use is a pair of glasses (the tool).

1. Examples of tools: Discussion boards, chat rooms, gradebooks, social media, games, whiteboards, wikis, blogs, virtual classrooms, web conferencing, announcements, assignment and quiz tools, plagiarism detection tools, video repositories, online proctoring tools, and collaboration tools.

Tools, Engagement, and Active Learning: While listing activities that promote active learning or engagement in students is simple, it can be more-difficult to think of tools in the same way. However, the same principles that apply to activities can easily apply to tools. See the Expanded Explanations for Section 3.1 for more information.

Rationale: A specific concern of students from multiple focus groups across the nation is getting timely and appropriate feedback. Students left in the dark on how they did and why they received a certain grade are unable to improve or accurately repeat their original performance if it was excellent. Matching feedback to the type of activity and learning objective helps students link the activity to the larger goals of the course, and to accept the feedback as a part of the activity, instead of some separate entity.

Feedback Variation: Because most instructors are used to written feedback on submitted assignments, other types of feedback are often overlooked despite their equal (and sometimes greater) efficacy. Instructors are reminded of the following types of feedback which they might use with different types of assignments:

1. Group feedback
   1. Group feedback does not need to be used only for group activities, and can be used for whole-class feedback.
2. Video recordings
3. Audio recordings
4. Affirmations and/or new questions within discussions