Learning Activities

In intensive courses, "students spend more time per week engaged with the course, varying the learning activities will help prevent the weeks from feeling long and monotonous." - Wellesley College Quick Start Guide: section 1

Discussions

"Discussion forums give students an asynchronous way to talk to each other, and give the instructor a way to monitor and assess learning. Forums also provide students opportunities to learn from each other’s questions (and answers). They provide, in effect, the same benefits to both students and the instructor that circling the classroom while students are working in groups does. In most hybrid and/or remote courses, participation in discussion forums is part of a student’s final grade." - Wellesley College Quick Start Guide: section 3

  • Google Groups

  • Sakai Forums

Group Work

Group work helps build and maintain a sense of community as well as providing benefits for learning. - Wellesley College Quick Start Guide: section 3

  • Group conversations in Zoom breakout rooms

  • Tools for collaborating on media

    • Google slides, docs, sheets

    • Zoom whiteboard

    • Zoom annotation

    • VoiceThread
    • Perusall
    • H5P in Wordpress

  • Peer feedback in Sakai Assignments 

  • Group Grading in Sakai

Polling

Frequent interactions can help sustain engagement in online learning environments. Polls also help activate recall which helps learning.

  • Zoom

  • Google Forms

  • Sakai

To learn how to use these tools and more, explore the Learning Activities resources on VIRTL.