The Jumpstart Model

• Lecturing - Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University
• Effective Lecturing - Center for Teaching and Learning, University of North Carolina
• Lecturing Guidelines - Teaching Commons, Standford University

You may also want to consider using a guided note taking strategy where you can provide students with a worksheet or handout with blanks that they can fill-in during a lecture to promote active listening. The following is an example of a guided note taking template:

Another option to add greater interactivity to your lecture is to include a Lecture Bingo activity where you would create a bingo card with terms that will be discussed in a lecture. During the lecture, students listen for the terms and mark them accordingly on their bingo cards when the terms are used in the lecture. As participants collect five vertical, horizontal, or diagonal dots in a row, they yell "Bingo!"

• Education on Air

• Annenberg Media
• BBC Film Archive
• CBC Archives
• Google Video
• HotDocs Doc Library
• Internet Archives
• Khan Academy
• Merlot
• National Film Board of Canada
• National Geographic Videos
• PBS Video
• TeacherTube
• Vimeo
• YouTube EDU

This activity provides students with an opportunity to apply concepts to real-world applications and makes a great Practice Activity as it asks students to speak immediately to the ways in which new material can be applied in real world settings. After students have been introduced to some principle, generalization, theory, or procedure, you can pass out index cards and ask students to write down at least one possible, real-world application for what they have just learned.

For this activity, students are asked to complete the second half of an analogy. The first half is a key relationship or idea from the content, and the second half is meant to check overall understanding of the connection between different concepts. It can be as simple as "A is to B and X is to Y." For a variation, the professor can provide three of the four possible blanks for students, leaving less possible answers. This activity helps students understand the relationship between two concepts or terms given as the first part of the analogy and connect the new relationship to one they are more familiar with. The image on the right is an example of an Approximate Analogy activity.

• Branching Scenarios How Many Decision Points
• Checklist For Creating Branching eLearning Scenarios

• What are some of the characteristics you personally admire about this organization? Why?
• What kinds of opportunities are available within the organization for career management and development?
• Would you refer a colleague or friend to this organization? Why?

Another option for a Practice Activity that examines the different viewpoints of a topic is a Pro/Con grid which asks students are asked to jot down a quick list of pros and cons, costs and benefits, or advantages and disadvantages on an issue. This activity helps students to learn about decision making process and apply a clear comparison method to make an educated decision. This technique can be used as a Practice Activity in any course where questions of value are an implicit part of the syllabus.

This activity requires students to categorize concepts according to the presence (+) or absence (-) of important defining features, thereby providing data on their analytic reading and thinking skills. When using this as a Practice Activity, choose a limited number of items or classes of items that are similar enough to confuse your students. Determine what the most important features are that the students must recognize to correctly categorize these items. Make a list of defining features that each category either possesses or does not possess. These must be rather clear-cut in terms of their presence or absence, although the categories may share a limited number of features. Sketch out a matrix with features listed down the left side and categories across the top, or vice versa. Ask students to complete the matrix and provide a time limit for doing so. The following is an example of a Defining Features Matrix:

The documented problems technique asks students to show both their work and show the reasoning behind their work, which provides extremely valuable and detailed information about any conceptual difficulties or lingering misconceptions students may have, as well as an overview of the basic strategies they are using to solve problems. The primary emphasis of this activity is on documenting the steps the students go through in attempting to solve the problems rather than on whether the answers are correct or not. Documented problems are an extremely effective means of helping students clarify their thinking and gain more deliberate control over their approach to problem solving. Documentation of a problem can be something as simple as a brief paragraph or two of what was done (and why) or extensive as a line-by-line report of each step in a mathematical proof (Angelo & Cross, 1993).

• If you were to write a headline for this topic or issue right now that captured the most important aspect that should be remembered, what would that headline be?

• How has your headline changed based on today's discussion? How does it differ from what you would have said yesterday?

A memory matrix is a simple square or rectangle which is divided into horizontal rows and vertical columns. The rows and columns will contain key course content or topics that students need to “connect.” Students must fill in the blank cells with information that connects particular rows and columns. The Memory Matrix is useful as a Practice Activity in courses with high information content. It is best used after a Content Activity that focuses on a substantial amount of clearly categorized Information.

• StudyMate
• Hot Potatoes
• PuproseGames
• Quizlet

• Using Role Play Simulations to Promote Active Learning

• For one of these, choose a colour that you feel best represents or captures the essence of that idea.
• For another one, choose a symbol that you feel best represents or captures the essence of that idea.
• For the other one, choose an image that you feel best represents or captures the essence of that idea.

• CONNECT: How are the ideas and information presented CONNECTED to what you already knew?
• EXTEND: What new ideas did you get that EXTENDED or pushed your thinking in new directions?
• CHALLENGE: What is still CHALLENGING or confusing for you to get your mind around? What questions, wonderings or puzzles do you now have?

• I used to think...
• But now, I think...

This technique consists of asking students to jot down a quick response to one question: “What is the muddiest point in ________?” This technique provides information on what student find least clear or most confusing about a particular lesson or topic. As a Summary Activity, the muddiest point requires students to reflect on the lesson and identify any areas which were not clear. Faculty can use the feedback to discover which points are most difficult for students to learn to guide their teaching decisions about which topics to emphasize and how much time to spend on each.

A one minute paper is a quick, concise paper, written by students (either individually or in groups) that typically focuses on a short answer question. The question is usually introduced at the end of a class to help summarize and reinforce the material learned in that particular class. This activity provides the feedback required to ensure that the intended learning was successful (or not) and can also provide feedback to the students. If the students are confused by the content, or are unable to answer the short question, this is an indicator to both the student and the faculty member that the material taught in the class may need to be revisited.

This activity requires the student to answer the questions represented by WDWWHWWW (Who Does/Did What to Whom, How, When, Where, and Why?) about a given topic, and then to synthesize those answers into a single informative, grammatical sentence. The purpose of this strategy is to find out how concisely, completely, and creatively students can summarize a given topic within the grammatical constraints of a single sentence. This strategy can provide feedback on students' summaries of just about anything that can be represented in the declarative form, from historical events, to the plots of stories and novels, to chemical reactions and mechanical processes.

• Recall: Students make a list of what they recall as most important from the lesson.
• Summarize: Students summarize the essence of the lesson.
• Question: Students ask one or two questions that remained unanswered.
• Connect: Students briefly explain the essential points and how they relate to the goals of the class.
• Comment: Students evaluate and share feedback about the lesson.

This activity can be used as both a Connection and Summary Activity and asks students to uncover their initial thoughts, ideas, questions and understandings about a topic and then to connect these to new thinking about the topic after they have received some instruction. It involves asking student to respond to the following prompts:

• What are 3 Thoughts/Ideas you have related to the topic?
• What are 2 Questions you have about the topic?
• What is 1 Analogy/Metaphor related to the topic?