Designing for Student Engagement: Creating Learning Activities with Interactive Multimedia

1. Designing for Student Engagement: Creating Learning Activities with Interactive Multimedia Tracy Penny Light LT3 Centre, University of Waterloo MERLOT International Conference August 5, 2004

2. Overview We will consider: • the importance of student engagement in learning • the importance of learning styles in activity design • different types of learning activities • the importance of an integral approach to learning activity design We will work to: • design a “mock” interactive learning activity • design a learning activity for a MERLOT learning object in your discipline

3. Student Engagement What does the research say? • “Students learn by becoming involved.” • “Learning is not a spectator sport.” • “Students learn what they care about and remember what they understand.”

4. Understanding Our Learners Where do we start? • Form an hypothesis about your learners based on your observations of them • Talk to your colleagues to see if your assumptions are the same and catalog EVERYONE’S assumptions…even yours! • Consider your own learning preferences and keep them in mind as you design your activity

5. How Do We Learn? What are our own learning preferences? i.e. Solomon-Felder Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire Reflective-----X---------------------Active Sensing-----X---------------------Intuitive Visual--------------X------------Verbal Sequential---------------------X-----Global

6. Creating Learner Profiles (Personas) How do your target learners like to learn? Consider: • Learner preferences • Learners’ background • Outside interests • Knowledge of topic?

7. Types of Learning Activities Examples of learning activities:

8. Designing Learning Activities Bloom’s Taxonomy Evaluation Synthesis Analysis Application Comprehension Knowledge

9. Where does your activity fit? Course Design Model

10. Designing a Learning Activity: The “Pizza Explorer” (30 min.) • In pairs, go to the Pizza Explorer http://www.accessexcellence.org/pizza • Using the current scenario and persona, design an activity to address the identified learning level.

11. Designing your own Learning Activity (45 min.) • Go to MERLOT www.merlot.org and choose a learning object in your own discipline that you think you could use in one of your own courses • Considering your own course design and learners design an activity to address your desired learning level.

12. Sharing our Activities (15 min.) • In your pairs, share your idea for your learning activity and provide each other feedback on the design

13. Questions?

14. Thank You! Tracy Penny Light tracy@LT3.uwaterloo.ca