Transitioning Active Learning Methods Online in FASS

For the arts, humanities and social sciences, in addition to discussion, there are a handful of typical in-class activities that faculty rely upon fairly regularly in their classrooms to encourage active learning, engagement with the material, and critical and collaborative thought. During the recent and abrupt shift to online teaching and learning, you may have wondered: “How will I pair-up students?” or “How will I do those vote-with-your-feet activities?” If you’re moving a course online for the first time and wondering how on earth you’re going to replicate, or replace, all of those in-class activities in meaningful ways, this article is for you. We explore four common in-class activities and their online equivalents, and then conclude with some suggestions for thinking through the process of translating an in-class activity to an online activity.  

Note: The online active learning suggestions in this article assume that you’ve polled your class at the beginning of the course to determine students’ access to technology and digital resources. Assume that each student has variable access to the internet, a personal computer or even a smart phone. Asynchronous activities completed outside of class time are an empathetic acknowledgement of this reality; however, depending on your department or faculty, you may be required to do some synchronous (real-time) teaching. Activities are presented for both asynchronous and synchronous contexts.  

Pro-tip: For synchronous learning, make sure you spend a few minutes explaining the features of the video conferencing app and how to use them by sharing your screen. Go through a quick test run. It will prevent chaos later.  

Think-Pair-Share 

This is a go-to activity for many instructors. When using think-pair-share (TPS), you give students a moment to consider a discussion question, pair them up with another student for a few minutes, and then bring everyone’s attention back to the wider group, where some pairs may share what they discussed.  

Synchronous version: At some point during your lecture you can move students into “breakout groups”, one of the features of Collaborate Ultra. Or, you might ask students to turn off their computer microphones and video, and “meet” one another on Brightspace using the chat feature (pairs will be assigned prior to class time and posted in the LMS, or in the video conferencing app’s chatroom). Set a timer. When time is up, come back together as a group and call on some pairs to share their findings.  

Asynchronous version: This activity may be translated to Brightspace using the discussion boards and chat rooms. Cut to the chase and assign the pairings yourself—post as an announcement and as a list in the Brightspace site. Give the students a date range within which they should hold their paired discussion. The paired conversation may happen via a chat box within Brightspace, together over email or over the phone (if students are comfortable sharing their phone number with their partner). If students prefer not to share their personal phone numbers, calls may be made through the app on a computer (Microsoft Teams and Skype) with a built-in mic or smart phone. It would be helpful, in this context, to give students a few specific quantifiable or qualifiable tasks. For example, students could come up with three responses to your prompt, or students could apply a particular mode of inquiry to the prompt to develop an answer. Then, one of the students of the pair can post a point or two from the paired conversation in the general discussion board. The other student may be called upon to respond to another pair’s post in the general discussion forum.  

Forced Choice/Four Corners  

This activity requires physical movement within the classroom. The instructor asks students to vote on a question or indicate where they fall on a spectrum of agreement or disagreement. Usually, students move to one of four corners of the classroom to indicate their choice.  

Synchronous version: Interesting visual effects can be achieved with the various features of video conferencing apps—video boxes, emojis and image filters, for example. Perhaps the simplest solution is to ask students to turn off their cameras if they “agree” (or disagree) with the statement you pose to them. Everyone will be able to see the degree of agreement by gauging the proportion of empty to live boxes. It may not have the benefit of physical movement, but it provides a visual. Collaborate offers anonymous polling, as well.  

Asynchronous version: An effective way to replicate this activity online—and maybe even gather some data from it—is to create a poll in Brightspace. You might pose a set of questions and ask students to respond to them, in effect polling the class on their views. Depending on the ultimate purpose of this activity, you could demonstrate how different language choices or poll design could lead to different results. Students may then discuss the results on the Brightspace discussion forums. Making the poll anonymous may allow students to take greater risks in their answers (Green, Hamarman & McKee, 2015, p. 23).  

Role Play 

Role plays are useful across a variety of disciplines in order to better understand a character in a novel, play or other piece of literature, or even to explore, sociologically, a different subject position within a social community.  

Prep work: Create a list of characters and sketch out their general characteristics and contexts—whatever will help the student to imagine the person’s attitudes, beliefs or material constraints/opportunities. Offer a scene, plot point or problem within which the characters must interact. Establish the pairs or groups of students for each scene.  

Synchronous: Though this activity is highly dynamic and discussion-provoking in the classroom, a few adjustments can make it a successful online activity. Role play is often used to explore feelings or underlying beliefs and to facilitate effective communication about a topic. Depending on your ultimate hopes from the activity, you may or may not give students time to prepare beyond 5-10 minutes to read your scene/context sheet. Student role plays may then commence in the video conferencing app, but make sure non-acting students have muted their microphones (you can mute attendees). Or, you may consider scheduling a time to video conference with smaller groups of students instead of the entire class. Alternatively, student groups could pre-record their role plays which would be viewed during the next class session. Students can discuss synchronously or submit written responses to the role plays in the Brightspace discussion board. Be prepared to address any difficult assumptions presented by students during this activity and include time for a thorough debrief and discussion.  

Asynchronous: Put the students into small groups, assigning each student a character. Create a discussion board for each group and then let them act out their characters in the discussion board. Give them some qualitative and quantitative goals, like trying to convince another character of a different point of view or a minimum number of statements in the script to achieve for each character. Alternatively, the groups can create an email chain, messaging one another in character, cc’ing you in the conversation.  

Fishbowl 

This activity is particularly easy to transfer online. The goal is to elicit clarifying questions from the students by having them write their questions on index cards, collecting the questions into a bowl or container, and then pulling them out to answer them in class.  

Synchronous: Allow students to post their questions anonymously onto a course discussion board. Give them a timeframe before the next class to complete their post and spend the beginning of the class answering the questions from the board. Anonymous polling may also be beneficial here: You might ask students to rate their understanding of a concept on a scale of 1 to 5, again using Collaborate’s poll feature.  

Asynchronous: Follow the same advice as above but create a video of yourself responding to the questions and post it on Brightspace. That way, students may watch the video at any time.  

Conclusion: Take any activity online 

 For any other in-class activity that you might want to translate to the online environment, Green, Hamarman and McKee (2015) suggest going back and reminding yourself of the core goals of the activity and think creatively from there. Trying to replicate every aspect and nuance of the activity (and getting frustrated by all the tech) will likely muddy the effectiveness. The second part of this blog post will cover five more activities: Mind Mapping, Note-taking Pairs, Jigsaw Reading, Exam Review and Simulations/Debates.  

References 

Green, E.R., Hamarman, A., & McKee, R.W. (2015). Online sexuality education pedagogy: Translating five in-person teaching methods to online learning environments. Sex Education (15)1,19-30. doi: 10.1080/14681811.2014.942033