Copied: Student activation both out-of-class and in-class

Description:

This learning design is related to a class on 'social, reproductive and play behaviour' in domestic animals. The class last for three hours (3 x 45 min) and usually consists of a 1 hour lecture and 2 hours of dicussions. In my experience, with this setup, I loose the attention of the students half way through the lecture or maybe even earlier.

As I will cover three topics in this class, I will instead divide the lecture into three shorter sub-lectures, with one sub-lecture per hour. Each sub-lecture will include mentimeter questions and will be followed by an exercise to activity student and increase learning. The class will end with the students creating a word-cloud with the most important key concepts of the class, which will make the students reflect on the content of the class.

Prior to the class, the students will read the curriculum connected to the class / the specific topic. They are also asked to find a video online that shows play behaviour in an animal and are asked upload the link to the video in a discussion forum on brightspace. The videos will be used in an exercise in-class of the third hour.

The e-tivity will be performed after class, where the students will take a quiz designed on Brightspace, testing their learning of the topic. After taking the quiz, the students will reflect on their own learning in a discussion forum on Brightspace, describing what parts of the topic they found most difficult. Each student will provide feedback in the discussion forum to at least two other students on whether they agree and how they will suggest to proceed with learning those parts.

The learning design is inspired by the STREAM model by allowing for out-of-class preparation, in-class activity and online follow-up. In a future version of the class, I wish to transform the sub-lectures to webcasts and to include the quiz and reflections prior to the class, to adapt the class content to the current students.